Timothy Kreiner
Ph.D., English, University of California, Davis, 2013 M.A., Creative Writing, University of California, Davis, 2005 B.A. American and English Literature, Oberlin College, 2001
My research combines readings in cultural, economic, and political history. My current book project, The Long Downturn and its Discontents: Language Writing and the New Left, charts the shifting terrain of US poetry and politics during the long downturn in capital accumulation from 1970 to the present. This project focuses on the two great upswellings of new poetry in the period: the avowedly anti-capitalist formalism of “language writing,” and the poetry of multicultural social movements. Seeing frequently opposed literary traditions as closely linked with developments in post-1960s US culture and politics, I argue that cultural theorists attributed anti-racist, feminist, and anti-capitalist politics to opposed poetic forms as the dynamics of capitalist social reproduction began to break down in the postwar world. My second book project, The Work of Art and Unemployment, is a theory of the impact of surplus populations on twentieth century American literature.
Courses
ENGL 114: Much Ado about Capitalism; ENGL 114: Persistent Inequalities; ENGL 115