Stephen John Dilks
Associate Professor of English & Irish Literature
Director of Writing Across the Curriculum Program
118 Cockefair Hall
816.235.2556; 816.377.4522 (cell)
dilkss@umkc.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday 12:30-2, Thursday 8:15-9:10 (Muddy's)

In Fall 2009 Syracuse University Press will publish Samuel Beckett in the Literary Marketplace: His Life as a Professional Writer. This book marks a serious challenge to received understandings of Beckett as an author "damned to fame." I  have also published articles on the subject of authorship and literary marketing in the James Joyce Quarterly, the Modern Language Review, and the Journal of Modern Literature. Cultural Conversations: The Presence of the Past  is used to teach Composition and Communication at numerous colleges across the country; I am currently developing another Composition textbook for Bedford/St Martin's called Americans in the World: Learning from Global Encounters. My next major project will be a historical analysis of the evolution of writing as a profession: chapters will focus on Daniel Defoe, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dorothy Richardson, and George Orwell.

Degrees:

• Ph.D., Rutgers University
• M.A., Rutgers University
  
• B.A., Honors (first class), Stirling University, Scotland

Areas of Specialization:

• Samuel Beckett
• James Joyce
• Twentieth Century Irish Literature
• The North of Ireland Since 1968.  Cultural Studies
• Modernism and Postmodernism
  

Research & Teaching Interests:

• College-Level Reading and Writing
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Courses:

• Popular Literature (gen ed course)
• Modern and Contemporary Irish Literature (gen ed course).
  

Other:

I am the founding Director of the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching (see http://go.umkc.edu/facet). I am also a soccer player, manager, and coach (see http://omegasc.com).