Calvin Thomas
Professor English- Education
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1990
- Specializations
Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
- Biography
Dr. Thomas works in critical theory and modern and postmodern literature and culture. His research involves feminist, psychoanalytic, and deconstructive interrogations of gender, sexuality, and the body. His study Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line (University of Illinois Press, 1996) examines repressions of the male body in social constructions of normative masculinity and the role played by writing – as material act or “bodily function”– in the disruption of gendered identity. Long interested in the relation of men to feminism, Dr. Thomas is also concerned with the implications of “straight” negotiations with queer theory, and his co-edited volume Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality (University of Illinois Press, 2000) examines this terrain, as does Masculinity, Psychoanalysis, Straight Queer Theory: Essays on Abjection in Literature, Mass Culture, and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Ten Lessons in Theory: An Introduction to Theoretical Writing was published by Bloomsbury in 2013, and Adventures in Theory: A Compact Anthology is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in November 2018.
- Publications
Adventures in Theory: A Compact Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018)
Ten Lessons in Theory: An Introduction to Theoretical Writing (Bloomsbury, 2013)
Masculinity, Psychoanalysis, Straight Queer Theory: Essays on Abjection in Literature, Mass Culture, and Film (Palgrave Macmillan,2008).
Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line (University of Illinois Press, 1996)
Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality, editor, with Joseph Aimone and Catherine MacGillivray (University of Illinois Press, 2000).
“No Kingdom of the Queer,” in Derrida and Queer Theory, ed. Christian Hite (Punctum, 2017).
“On Being Post-Normal: Heterosexuality After Queer Theory,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, eds. Michael O’Rourke and Noreen Giffney (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2009): 17-32.
“Happy, S(c)atisfied People,” essay review of Perversion: Psychoanalytic Perspectives/Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, ed. Dany Nobus and Lisa Downing (London: Karnac, 2006), Journal for Lacanian Studies 5:1 (2007): 125-35.
“Men and Feminist Literary Criticism,” in A History of Feminist Literary Criticism, eds. Susan Sellers and Gill Plain, (Cambridge University Press, 2007): 187-209.
“Crossing the Streets, Queering the Sheets; or, ‘Do You Want to Save the Changes to Queer Heterosexuality?’” Foreword to Straight Writ Queer: Non-normative Expressions of Heterosexual Desire in Literature, ed. Richard Fantina (McFarland Press, 2006), 1-8.
“‘It’s No Longer Your Film’: Abjection and (the) Mulholland (death) Drive,” Angelaki: The Theoretical Journal of the Humanities 11:2 (2006): 81-98.
“Moments of Productive Bafflement: or, Defamiliarizing Graduate Studies in English,” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 5:1 (Winter 2005): 19-35.
“Racing Forms and the Exhibition(ist) (Mis)Match,” in Men’s Bodies, ed. Judith Still (Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 245-262.
“Must Desire Be Taken Literally?” Parallax 25: “Having Sex” (October-December 2002): 46-56.
“Is Straight Self-Understanding Possible?” Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy 13:2 (Fall 2002): 17-24.
“Re-enfleshing the Bright Boys: or, How Male Bodies Matter to Feminist Theory.” In Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions. Ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002): 60-89.
“Cultural Droppings: Bersani’s Beckett,” Twentieth Century Literature 47:2 (Summer 2001): 169-196.
“Last Laughs: Batman, Masculinity, and the Technology of Abjection,” Men and Masculinities 2:1 (July 1999): 26-48.
Additional publications in Contemporary Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Genders, Novel,New German Critique, Literature and Psychology, Prolepsis, Mississippi Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly, The Georgia Review.