Associate Professor, Minard 322H, 231-7158, Gary.Totten@ndsu.edu
I began working at NDSU in fall 2004, after teaching for five
years at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. I received both a BA
in Humanities (1990) and an MA in English (1993) from Brigham Young
University. My PhD in American Literature is from Ball State
University (1998). My research is focused mainly on the period of
late nineteenth and early twentieth century American literature and
culture, though I also research and teach texts from earlier and
later periods. An important sub-specialty of my research is travel
literature. My recent publications have focused on the fiction of
Edith Wharton and the travel writing of Theodore Dreiser. I
recently published an article on the transatlantic travel writing
of Booker T. Washington and have just completed a project on tropes
of travel and lynching in Ida B. Wells's work.
In terms of a theoretical framework, I would characterize my
approach as a blending of new historicism and narrative theory,
with a healthy dose of cultural and critical race theory. I also
enjoy archival research and have recently spent time in manuscript
collections at the rare book libraries of the University of
Pennsylvania and Yale University. There's nothing quite like the
feel and smell of old books and paper to set the heart racing (I
exaggerate, but only slightly). I also enjoy research into the
material culture of a period as found in periodicals,
advertisements, and other textual and visual artifacts, and in my
teaching, I ask students to grapple with such artifacts as a way to
better appreciate the complexities of texts and cultures. I
routinely teach undergraduate and graduate courses in late
nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, travel
literature, and writing in the humanities and social sciences.
Dr. Totten will be on leave 2008-09.
Last updated: March 23, 2008.