Thomas Oliver Beebee

 

Home address

Institutional Address: 

123 Osmond Street                                                                            

State College, PA 16801

Tel.:  814-233-1089

E-mail:  tob@psu.edu

311 Burrowes Bldg.

Penn State University

UniversityPark, PA 16802

Tel.:  814-863-4935

FAX: 814-863-8882

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

EDUCATION       

1973-77                   B.A. Dartmouth College (Summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa)  Major: Comparative Literature

1977-78                   M.A. University of Michigan  Field: Comparative Literature

1978-84                   Ph.D. University of Michigan  Field: Comparative Literature,

 

PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS             

1984-86                   Assistant Professor of German, Bowdoin College

1986-92                   Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and German, Penn State University

1992-                       Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and German, Penn State University

Fall, 1993                Visiting Scholar (Fulbright), Department of English, Federal University of Paraná,  Brazil

2000-                       Professor of Comparative Literature and German, Penn State University

2000-01                   Visiting Scholar, Romance Languages, The Johns Hopkins University

 

PUBLICATIONS

Books:

Clarissa on the Continent:  Translation and Seduction.  University Park, PA:  Penn State Press, 1990.  xi + 228 pp. 

 

The Ideology of Genre:  A Comparative Study of Generic Instability.  University Park:  Penn State Press, 1994.  viii + 303 pp.

 

Epistolary Fiction: in Europe.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1999.  x+277 pp.

 

Translation: 

With Qing-yun Wu.  The Remote Country of Women.  By Bai Hua.  Honolulu:  U of Hawaii P, 1994.  369 pp. 

 

In Progress:         True Imaginary Places: Landscapes of Nation in Modern European and American Fiction (250 pp.)

                                Eschatechnologies:M illennial Cultures and Literatures of the Americas (100 pp. completed)

                                Transmesis: Inside Translation's Black Box (80 pp. completed)

 

Edition:                 

With Steven R. Cerf and James L. Hodge. Introduction, notes, and glossary for Richard von Weizsäcker's Zum 40. Jahrestag der Beendigung des Krieges in Europa und der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft.  Cherry Hill, NJ:  American Association of Teachers of German, 1987. 32 pps.

 

Selected Journal Articles (all refereed):       

"Orientalism, Absence, and the Poème en Prose." Rackham Journal of the Arts and Humanities, 2 (1980):  47-71.

 

"Kafka's Law:  A Recursive Definition."  Kennesaw Review 2.1 (Fall 1989):  39-54.

 

"Doing Clarissa's Will:  Samuel Richardson's Legal Genres."  The International Journal of Law and Semiotics, 2.5 (1989):  159-182.

 

"Ballad of the Apocalypse:  Another Look at Bob Dylan's 'Hard Rain.'"  Text and Performance Quarterly  11 (1991):  18-34.

 

"Johann Jakob Dusch and the Genealogy of Epistolary Fiction." JEGP  91.3 (July 1992):  360-82.

 

"The Letter Killeth:  The Pli of Death in Jean-Paul Marat's Epistolary Fiction." Clio:  A Journal of Literature, History, Philosophy of History  21.3 (Spring 1992):  217-41.  Translated into Chinese as “Huoxing baocang:  Lun Mala xiaoshuo zhong de siwang heihan.”  Zhongwai Wenxue 263 (April 1994):  33-56.                       

 

“The Fiction of Translation:  Abdelkebir Khatibi’sLove in Two Languages.”  Sub-stance 23.1 (1994):  63-78.

 

Talking Maps:  Region and Revolution in Juan Benet’s Volverás a Región  and Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões.”  Comparative Literature 47.3 (Summer 1995):  193-214.

 

“The Rifled Mailbag:  Robber as Reader in Epistolary Fiction."  Revue de Littérature Comparée (Jan.-Mar. 1996):  14-36.

 

 Thomas O. Beebee and Joshua M. Getz.  “The Epistolary Politics of Amos Oz’s Black Box.”  Prooftexts 18.1 (January 1998). 45-65.

 

“Tryptichs of Solipsism:  The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and Fogo Morto by José Lins do Rego.”  The Comparatist (1999):  63-88.

 

Thomas O. Beebee and Beverly Weber. "A Literature of Theory: Christa Wolf's Kassandra Lectures as Feminist Anti-Poetics." German Quarterly 74.3 (Summer 2001): 257-77.

 

"They Built Millennium: Jesuits and Guaranís 1610-1768." Zeitsprünge 6 (2002): 101-19.

 

“Ways of Seeing Italy: Landscapes of Nation in Goethe’s Italienische Reise and its Counter-Narratives.” Monatshefte 94.3 (2002): 322-45.

 

Lenka Pankova and Thomas O. Beebee., "Milorad Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars as Translational Fiction.” Serbian Studies, to appear December 2004. 7500 words.

 

"The Canudos Phenomenon: Three Early Factions." Brazil/Brasil, to appear. 6500 words.

 

Selected Book Chapters:

“Letters of the Law:  Rhetoric and Fiction in the Artes Dictaminis.”  In Action and Agency:  Fourth Round Table on Law and Semiotics.  Ed. Roberta Kevelson.  New York:  Peter Lang, 1991.  33-64.

 

"Bertolt Brecht's Legal Theater."  In Law and Aesthetics.  Ed. Roberta Kevelson.  New York:  Peter Lang, 1992.  37-67.

 

“Kant, Goethe, Benjamin, and the Law of Marriage.”  In Worldmaking.  Ed. William Pencak.  NY:  Lang, 1996.  193-210.

 

“Epistolary Fiction.”  Encyclopedia of the Novel.  Chicago:  Fitzroy Dearborn, to appear 1998.  3000 words.

 

“Cathartic Thinking:  Semiotics and Tragic Theory.”  In A Handbook of Semiotics.  Ed. Roberta Kevelson.  New York:  Lang,  1998.  173-90.

 

"Rebellion in the Backlands."  In World Literature and Its Times, Vol. 1:  Latin-American Literature and its Times.  Detroit:  Gale Research Press, 1999.  431-43.

 

"The Öffentlichkeit of Jürgen Habermas: The Frankfurt School's Most Influential Concept?" In Rethinking the Frankfurt School. Ed. Jeffrey Nealon and Karin Irr. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. 187-204.

 

Translation:         

Co-translator with Qing-yun Wu.  "I Think . . . ."  By Zhan-chun Geng.  Yearbook of General and Comparative Literature, 38 (1989):  120--33.

 

Reviews in: Biography ; Clio; Comparative Literature Studies; Journal of English and Germanic Philology; Luso-Brazilian Review; Yearbook of General and Comparative Literature

 

SELECTED PAPERS AND SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

"Writing as Ruling in Aphra Behn and Claude Lévi-Strauss."  Annual Convention of the American Comparative Literature Association, Atlanta, GA, April 1987.

 

"Recursivity and Narrative/Life."  International Conference on Narrative, Columbus, Ohio, March 1988.

 

"The Voice of the Translator."  American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Waltham, MA, March 1989.

 

"The Fiction of Translation:  Abdelkebir Khatibi's Love in Two Languages" Annual Convention of the American Comparative Literature Association, State College, PA, March 1990.

 

"Death and the Letter in Jean-Paul Marat's Epistolary Novel."  Invited lecture, Dartmouth College, October 1991.

 

“Region and Revolution in Juan Vincent Benet’s Volverás a Región and Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões.”  American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Columbia University, April 1992.

 

“The Literature of Theory.”  American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Indiana University, March 1993.

 

“A Mulher como escritora de cartas em várias literaturas.”  X Semana de Estudos Germánicos, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, 26 October 1993.

 

“The Lettered Woman: Variations on a Metaphor.”  Invited lecture, California State University at Los Angeles, 12 May 1994.

 

“Is it Science?  Some Mental Maps in Modern Literature and Criticism.”  American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Athens, GA, March 1995.

 

“Between Word and Text:  The Translating Fictions of Borges, Brossard, and Khatibi”  American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, University of Notre Dame, April 1996.

 

“Cultural Memory and the Narrativization of Space.”  The International Comparative Literature Association Triannual Convention, Leiden, The Netherlands, August 1997.

 

"Desert Landscape with Woman:  Mary Austin, Nicole Brossard, and Joy Harjo Translate the American Southwest"  ACLA Annual Convention, Austin, Texas, March 1998.

 

"The Y2K Bug, Caesar's Column , Canudos, Waco, Apokalypsis -- and You:  Premillennarianism as a Transnational American Phenomenon."  ACLA Annual Convention, Montreal, April 1999.

 

"They Built Millennium: Jesuits and Guaranis 1610-1768." The Fifth Annual Conference on Millennial Studies, Boston University, October 2000.

 

"Golden Flying Saucers: Ernesto Cardenal and Millennial Ufology." The Sixth Annual Conference on Millennial Studies, Boston University, November 2001.

 

"Comparative Literature in the United States Today." Invited Lecture. Remin University Conference on Chinese Studies, Beijing, June 2004.

 

"Transmesis and Postcolonial Reason." Critical Inquiry: End of Theory? Tsinghua University, Beijing, June 2004.

 

GRADUATE THESES SUPERVISED

Thirteen doctoral dissertations (eleven in Comparative Literature, two in German), and three master’s theses completed under my supervision, with four more in progress.  Also served on thirty Penn State doctoral dissertation committees in Comparative Literature, English, German, Spanish, Speech Communication, Art Education, and Geography.

 

GRANTS

1987                        Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies Grant (Penn State).  $3080

1988                        Research Initiation Grant (Penn State) for research in Wolfenbüttel, Germany.  $7000

1990                        NEH Travel to Collections Grant for research in Paris, France.  $750

1991                        Jacobs Research Fellowship (Penn State);  one semester teaching release.  $7000

1991                        Folger Institute Grant-in-Aid (to attend Folger Seminar and conduct research).  $1367

1993                        Fulbright Lecturing/Research Grant, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil.  $21,000

1997                        Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies Grant (Penn State) for research in Bahia, Brazil.

1998-2000               Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies Term Fellowship.  $6000

 

AWARDS & ACTIVITIES

1977                        Phi Beta Kappa

1979                        Delta Phi Alpha Honor Society for German Scholars, University of Michigan

1991                        Honorary Inductee, Phi Sigma Iota Foreign Language Honor Society

1992                        Class of 1933 Humanities Award, College of Liberal Arts, Penn State University

1993                        Eisenhower Award for Excellence in Teaching, Penn State University

1994-98                   NEH Evaluation Committee:  Summer Stipend Grants (French, German, and Slavic)

1995-97                   CIES Disciplinary Advisory Committee for Fulbright Scholar Awards (Comparative Literature)

1999-                       Representative of the ACLA to the Field Committee for the National Initiative for a Networked                                         

                                Cultural Heritage Project

2001-                       Editor-in-Chief, Comparative Literature Studies

 

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