Associate Professor of
English
St. John's College of Arts and Sciences
Queens Campus, St. John Hall, Rm. B40-2
(718) 990-5631
lowneyj@stjohns.edu
Office Hours, Spring 2006
Tuesday/Thursday: 10:00 - 10:30 A.M., 3:00-4:00 P.M.
Education
1991 Ph.D., Brown University, English and American Literature
1986 M.A., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, English and
American Literature
1979 B.A., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, English and
American Literature
Publications
Books
The American Avant-Garde Tradition: William Carlos
Williams, Postmodern Poetry, and the Politics of
Cultural Memory. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press,
1997.
Chapters
"'Truths of Outrage, Truths of Possibility': Muriel
Rukeyser's 'The Book of the Dead.'" "How Shall We
Teach Each Other of the Poet?":The Life and Writing
of Muriel Rukeyser. Ed. Anne F. Herzog and Janet E.
Kaufman. New York: St. Martin's, 1999. 195-208.
"'Homesick for those memories': The Gendering of
Historical Memory in Women's Narratives of the Vietnam
War." Burning Down the House: Recycling Domesticity.
Ed. Rosemary Marangoly George. Boulder, CO: Westview/
HarperCollins, 1998. 257-78.
Articles
"The Desert Music" and "Journey to Love." The
William Carlos Williams Encyclopedia. Ed. Bryce
Conrad and Richard Frye. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood,
(forthcoming 2004).
"Reading the Borders of 'The Desert Music.'" The
William Carlos Williams Review (forthcoming 2004).
"Poetry, Property, and Propriety: Lorine Niedecker and
the Legacy of the Great Depression." Sagetrieb 18.1
(Spring 1999): 29-40.
"Haiti and Black Transnationalism: Remapping the Migrant
Geography of Home to Harlem." African American
Review 34.3 (Fall 2000): 413-29.
"Langston Hughes and the 'Nonsense' of Bebop."
American Literature 72.2 (June 2000): 357-85.
"'Littered with Old Correspondences': Elizabeth Bishop,
Wallace Stevens, and the 1930s." Arizona Quarterly
55.2 (Summer 1999): 87-114.
"'A material collapse that is Construction': Gwendolyn
Brooks's In the Mecca and the Poetics of Counter-
Memory." MELUS 23.3 (Fall 1998): 3-20.
"The 'Post-anti-esthetic' Poetics of Frank O'Hara."
Contemporary Literature 32 (Summer 1991): 244-
64. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, 78.
Ed. James P. Draper. Detroit: Gale, 1994. 372-76.
"Thoreau's Cape Cod: The Unsettling Art of the
Wrecker." American Literature 64 (June 1992): 239-54.
"'A Plot of Ground': The Problem of Cultural Identity
in the Emergence of Williams' Avant-Garde Stance."
Sagetrieb 9.3 (Winter 1990): 97-119.
with Audrey R. Duckert, "From the Linguistic Atlas
Archives: The Hanley Disks." Journal of English
Linguistics 19 (October 1986): 206-21.
Reprint
The American Avante Garde Tradition: William
Carlos Williams, Postmodern Poetry, and the
Politics of Cultural Memory. Lewisburg, PA:
Bucknell UP, 1997. Excerpted and reprinted in Bloom's
Major Poets:
William Carlos Williams. Ed. Harold Bloom. Chelsea
House: Broomall, PA: 2002. 35-38; 97-103.
Reviews
Untitled review essay on Remarkable Modernisms:
Contemporary American Authors on Modern Art, by
Daniel Morris. Studies in the Novel (forthcoming
2004.)
Untitled review essay on Caribbean Waves:
Relocating Claude McKay and Paule Marshall,
by Heather Hathaway. Modern Fiction Studies
46.4 (Winter 2000): 1028-30.
Untitled review essay on American Literature and
the Destruction of Knowledge, by Ronald E. Martin.
American Studies International 31 (April 1993):
149-51.
Work in Progress
The Ruins of Memory: Late Modernist American
Poetry and Historical Amnesia. Book-length ms.
Traveling Jazz: Jazz, Internationalism, and
African American Literary Modernism. (book in
progress)
Conference Presentations
"William Carlos Williams and Third-Phase Objectivism."
Modern Language Association Conference. San Diego,
Dec. 2003.
"Beyond Mecca: The Multiple Publics of Gwendolyn
Brooks." American Studies Association Conference.
Washington, DC, Nov. 2001.
"Amnesiac Modernism: Kenneth Fearing and the
Erasure of Memory." Material Modernisms Conference.
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, July 2001.
"A Metamorphic Palimpsest: The Underground Memory
of Thomas McGrath's Letter to an Imaginary Friend."
National Poetry Foundation Conference: "The Opening
of the Field: North American Poetry of the 1960s."
University of Maine, Orono, June 2000.
"Claude McKay, American Imperialism, and the Harlem
Renaissance." Modern Language Association
Conference. Chicago, Dec. 1999.
"'The Eagle and the Dollar': Claude McKay and New
World Imperialism." American Studies Association
Conference: "American Histories and the Question
of Empire." Seattle, Nov. 1998.
"Post-Americanist Williams." William Carlos Williams
Society. American Literature Assocation
Conference. San Diego, May 1998.
"Immigration and the Harlem Renaissance." Northeast
Modern Language Assocation Conference.
Baltimore, Apr. 1998.
"'Dream within a dream': Langston Hughes, Post-
World War II Harlem, and Black Counterpublic
Spheres." American Studies Association Conference:
"Going Public: Defining Public Cultures in the
Americas." Washington, DC, Nov. 1997.
"'Littered with Old Correspondences': Elizabeth
Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and the 1930s." Elizabeth
Bishop Conference. Worcester, MA, Oct. 1997.
"The Diagnostic Practice of William Carlos Williams."
New York College English Association Conference:
"The Healing Art of Literature." St. John's University,
New York City, Apr. 1997.
"Remapping Oppen's 'Return.'" National Poetry
Foundation Conference: "American Poetry in the
1950s." University of Maine, Orono, June 1996.
"A material collapse that is Construction": Gwendolyn
Brooks's In the Mecca and the Poetics of Counter-
Memory." Modern Language Association
Conference. Chicago, Dec. 1995.
"'The janitor's poems of every day': Sites of Waste,
Sites of Memory." Canadian American Studies
Association Conference: "TRASH: Class, Culture,
and Waste in America, 1607 to the Present."
Vancouver, Oct. 1995.
"Objectivism, Feminism, and the Modernist Canon:
Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Impropriety."
Modern Language Association Conference.
San Diego, Dec. 1994.
"Utopian Space, Dystopian Place: History and
Counter-Memory in Gwendolyn Brooks's In the
Mecca." California American Studies Association
Conference: "Cities on the Edge." San Diego,
May 1994.
"Vietnam, Historical Amnesia, and Joan Didion's
Democracy." Popular Culture Association and
American Culture Association Conference. Chicago,
Apr. 1994.
"Multiculturalism and Modernism: William Carlos
Williams and the Subject of American Literature."
Roberts Lecture. Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa,
Mar. 1994.
"Poetry, Property, and Propriety: Lorine Niedecker
and the Legacy of the 1930s." National Poetry
Foundation Conference: "The First Postmodernists:
American Poets of the 1930s Generation." University
of Maine, Orono, June 1993.
"Technologies of Memory: Recollecting the Vietnam
War in Jayne Anne Phillips' Machine Dreams and
Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country." New England
American Studies Association Conference: "The
Cultures of Technology: Science, Media, and the
Arts." Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts,
May 1993.
"Rewriting the War: Teaching the Literature of the
Vietnam War." Popular Culture Association and
American Culture Association Conference. New
Orleans, Apr. 1993.
"Another Usable Past: On Teaching the Multiculturalism
Debate." New England American Studies Association
Conference: "Multiculturalism and the Americas."
University of Massachusetts, Boston, Apr. 1992.
"'On the verge of vertigo': George Oppen and Cold
War American Culture." Northeast Modern Language
Association Conference. Buffalo, Apr. 1992.
"On the Margins of Modernism: William Carlos Williams
and the American 'Avant-Garde Tradition.'"
Conference on "The Canon and Marginality."
State University of New York, Binghamton, May 1991.
"Cultural Nationalism, Immigrant Ethnicity, and the
Avant-Garde Poetics of William Carlos Williams."
Northeast Modern Language Association Conference.
Hartford, Apr. 1991.
"Re-interpreting 'The War': Frank O'Hara's Revision of
Williams' Objectivist Poetics." Northeast Modern
Language Association Conference. Toronto, Apr. 1990.
Grants
2004 Donald C. Gallup Fellowship in American Literature,
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University. "Langston Hughes: Jazz, Internationalism,
and African American Modernism."
2000-1 Assisted Queens Borough Public Library for
Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Grant: "Writing
American: Literature, Memory, and Diversity"
1994 National Endowment for the Humanities Study
Grant: "Twentieth-Century African-American Poetry
and Culture"
Honors and Awards
2003 African American Heritage Month Outstanding
Faculty Award, St. John's University.
2002 St. John's University Summer Support Research
Grant: "Langston Hughes, Black Transnationalism,
and Cold War American Culture."
2000 St. John's University Summer Support of
Research Grant: "Regionalism and Internationalism
in Late Modernist American Poetry"
2000 Invited Lecturer, City College of New York,
New York City
2000-1 Vice President, William Carlos Williams Society
1998-9 Secretary, William Carlos Williams Society
1998-00 Merit Awards, St. John's University
1998 St. John's University Summer Support of
Research Grant: "Geographies of Memory: Historical
Amnesia and the American Long Poem, 1930s-1960s"
1998 Invited Speaker, William Carlos Williams Society,
American Literature Association Conference,
San Diego, May
1997 St. John's University Summer Support of
Research Grant: "Rethinking Postmodern American
Poetry: History, Memory, and the 1930s"
1994 Roberts Lecturer, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa
1987-90 Teaching Stipend and Tuition Fellowship, Brown
University
1989 Untermeyer Fellowship, Brown University
1986-7 University Fellowship, Brown University