Essays

Essays on Drama:

"African-American Drama from the Midwest." MidAmerica XXXII (2005): 95-119.
"Arthur Miller's Sojourn in the Heartland." American Drama 16:2 (Summer 2007): 28-45.
        "Back to the (Plutonian) Midwest: Sam Shepard's The God of Hell." New England Theatre Journal 18 (2007): 95-108.
        "Center Stage: Midwestern Plays and Playwrights."  Midwest Miscellany XXX (Spring 2002): 7-19.
        ----------.  Rpt. Agora, www.eiu.edu/~agora, May 2004.
"Collapsing Male Myths: Rabe's Tragicomic Hurlyburly." American Drama 3:1 (Fall 1993): 1-16.
        ----------.  Rpt. New Readings in American Drama: Something's Happening Here.  Ed. Norma Jenckes. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
"Dramatizing the Midwest."  MidAmerica XXXIV (2007): 59-78.
"The Incredible Shrinking Theatre." The Dramatists Guild Quarterly 33:4 (Winter 1997): 37-39.
        ----------.  Rpt. Curtain Call IV:2 (Oct.-Nov. 1997): 4.
"Insurrection et désir dans La Folle de Chaillot." La Folle de Chaillot 1945-1995: Lectures et métamorphoses. Les Cahiers Jean Giraudoux 25 (1997): 119-130.
        "Man among Men: David Mamet's Homosocial Order."  American Drama 1:1 (Fall 1991): 46-60.
        ----------.  Rpt. Fictions of Masculinity: Literary Constructions of Manhood .  Ed. Peter F. Murphy. New York: New York UP, 1994.
        ----------.  Rpt. David Mamet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 2003.
"[Midwestern] Drama." The America Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia. Eds. Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Clayton. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2006.
"Midwestern Dramas." In the Middle of the Midwest: An Anthology of Creative Non-Fiction from the Heartland .  Ed. Becky Bradway. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2003.
"The Midwestern Plays of Tennessee Williams." Tennessee Williams Annual Review No. 8 (2006): 33-50.
"The Playwright's Vision in 'The Process.'" The Dramatists Guild Quarterly 29:4 (Winter 1993): 13-14.
"The Psychology of Coriolanus." Penumbra 2:1 (Fall-Winter 1978): 19-28.
        "Rabe, Mamet, Shepard, and Wilson: Mid-American Male Dramatists of the 1970s and '80s."  The Midwest Quarterly XLVIII: 3 (Spring 2007): 342-58.
"Regional Tensions in Tennessee Williams's Candles to the Sun and Spring Storm." South Atlantic Review 72:3 (Summer 2007): 38-50.
"Signature Motifs in Midwestern Drama." Forthcoming in Dictionary of Midwestern Literature.
"Tennessee Williams's St. Louis on Stage." Tennessee Williams Literary Journal VI: I (Winter 2008): 10-22.
"Twain, Howells, and the Origins of Midwestern Drama." MidAmerica XXXI (2004): 25-42.
"Using Drama in the Composition Class." Kentucky English Bulletin 37:2 (Winter 1987-88): 95-105.
        "War of the Wests: Saroyan's Dramatic Landscape."  American Drama 9:2 (Spring 2000): 29-49.
"Western Drama and the New Frontier." American Drama 7:1 (Fall 1997): 99-120.
        "Wilder's Dramatic Landscape: Alienation Effect Meets the Midwest." American Drama 15:1 (Winter 2006): 43-61.
"William Inge's Dramatic Mindscape." South Dakota Review 42:3 (Fall 2004): 49-69.
        "You Can Go Home Again: Tennessee Williams' A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur."  Midwest Miscellany XXXIII (Fall 2006): 7-21.

Essays on Poetry:

"On Poetry and Pain ." A View from the Loft 24:6: 3-6, 17.
        ----------.  Rpt. The Muse Apprentice Guild (on-line), August 2002.
        ----------.  Rpt. Agora (on-line) XXVIII (Sept. 2002).
"On Poetry Readings." The Muse Apprentice Guild (on-line), Winter 2003.
        "Poetry, Beginnings to 1820." The Companion  to Southern Literature.  Eds. Joseph M. Flora and Lucinda H. MacKethan. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2002.  655-58.
        "Poetry as Play." Poet and Critic Winter 1983-84: 37-40.
"Recycling Poems." Orbis (UK) 65/66 (Summer-Autumn 1987): 41-43.
        "Toward a Less Primitive Prosody: Some Propositions."  Series of five articles. Counterpoint (UK), Summer 1977 to Spring 1979.
"Unity of Vision in T.S. Eliot's Waste Land." The Kaw Valley Literary Review 1:2 (Spring 1978): 11-16.
        "What's Wrong with Contemporary American Poetry."  A View from the Loft 11:2 (Sept. 1988): 1, 16-17.

Essays on Contemporary Writing:

"Beyond Self-Expression." A View from the Loft 21:1 (August 1998): 4,10.
        "Caveat Emptor: A Comment on Creative Writing Programs."  A View from the Loft 9:3 (Nov. 1986): 8-9.
        "Comment" on creative writing programs.  College English 56:2 (Feb. 1994): 219-220.
"Creative Writing in the Academy." Profession 1999: 106-112.
"The Literary Grants Climate in Illinois." IWI Newsletter July 1990: 1, 3.
"The New Regionalism." A View from the Loft 13:3 (Oct. 1990): 5, 16.
"On Poetry and Religion." IWI Newsletter May 1992: 1.
"On Writing and Wisdom." A View from the Loft 10:1 (Aug. 1987): 1, 6.
"Patronage and the Arts." A View from the Loft 12:4 (Nov. 1989): 6, 14-15.
        "Publishing's Publishing for A' That."  A View from the Loft 14:9 (April 1992): 7, 20-21.
"Rethinking Creative Writing." Electronic Book Review (on-line), May 2001.
"Species of Literary Fraud." A View from the Loft 15:10 (May 1993): 6-7, 17.
        ----------.  Rpt. Carousel , Vol. 16, No. 6, Nov./Dec. 1993, pp. 1, 10.  Rpt. Author World (on-line), 2000.
"Writing and the Self-Expression Industry." A View from the Loft12:1 (Aug. 1989): 3, 18.

Other Essays:

        "A Catalogue of Works Based on the Apocryphal Book of Judith: From the Mediaeval Period to the Present." Bulletin of Bibliography 44:3 (Sept. 1987): 89-92.
        "Graduate student unions won't destroy higher education."  Champaign News-Gazette 14 March 2001.
"The Hidden Enemy." Journeyman l:1 (Winter 1991): 8-10.
"The Other Side of Cancer." Touch: Healing in the Arts 1 (Fall 2006): 10-14.
"The Proud Virtues of Defeat." U.S. News and World Report 24 Aug. 1987: 5.

Reviews:

Review of The Man and the World: Selected Essays and All Tables of Contents from the Thomas Wolfe Newsletter and Review 1977-2000.  Eds. Takashi Kodeira and Hiroshi Tsunemoto. The Thomas Wolfe Review 29:1-2 (2005): 108-111.
Review of My Father’s Hands, by Thomas Wolfe. Ed. David Strange. The Thomas Wolfe Review 30:1-2 (2006): 153-55.
        Review of The Napkin Manuscripts: Selected Essays and an Interview, by Michael McFee.  Knoxville: U Tennessee P, 2006.  Mississippi Quarterly.

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