Stephen A. Fredman
Professor
Specialty: Twentieth-century American poetry
Degrees: B.F.A., California Institute of the Arts; M.A., California State University, Sonoma; Ph.D., Stanford University
Stephen Fredman's field is twentieth- and twenty-first-century American poetry and poetics. His first book, Poet's Prose: The Crisis in American Verse (Cambridge University Press, 1983, 1990), is concerned with the theoretical and historical conditions that make contemporary poetry viable. His second study, The Grounding of American Poetry: Charles Olson and the Emersonian Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1993), examines the tradition of avant-garde writers in America. His third book, A Menorah for Athena: Charles Reznikoff and the Jewish Dilemmas of Objectivist Poetry (University of Chicago Press, 2001), discusses modern American poetry and Jewish identity. His new study, Contextual Practice: Assemblage and the Erotic in Postwar Poetry and Art (Stanford University Press, 2010), looks at how poetry and art created new modes of living with the cultural detritus left by World War II. He has edited A Concise Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry (Blackwell, 2005)—with chapters outlining the various contexts that inform modern American poetry—and, with Steve McCaffery, the first book to consider Robert Creeley’s career as a whole, Form, Power, and Person in Robert Creeley’s Life and Work (University of Iowa Press, 2010). His research and teaching interests include modern poetry and poetics; prose poetry; Judaism & Modernism; California culture; poetry and performance art; collage theory; the question of tradition in American poetry; Indic thought and its impact upon American culture; translation theory. He has been awarded NEH, ACLS, and Lilly fellowships.
Recent Articles
- “Creeley’s Contextual Practice: Interviews, Conversations, and Collaborations.” Form, Power, and Person in Robert Creeley's Life and Work. Edited by Stephen Fredman and Steve McCaffery. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010. 181-202.
- "Forms of Visionary Collage: Harry Smith and the Poets." Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular. Edited by Andrew Perchuk and Rani Singh. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2009. 225-51.
- “Introduction to Edward Dorn.” Jacket 32 (April 2007): http://www.jacketmagazine.com/32/fredman-dorn.shtml
- “Surrealism Meets Kabbalah: The Place of Semina in Mid-Century California Poetry and Art.” American Poetry: Walt Whitman to the Present. Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 18. Edited by Robert Rehder and Patrick Vincent. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2006. 151-174. Reprinted on the PEPC (Penn Electronic Poetry Center): http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Fredman-Stephen_Semina.html
- "Mysticism: Neo-paganism, Buddhism, and Christianity." A Concise Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Edited by Stephen Fredman, 191-211. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.191-211.
- "Surrealism Meets Kabbalah: Wallace Berman and the Semina Poets." Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle. Edited by Andrew Duncan and Kristine McKenna. New York: D.A.P./Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2005. 40-48.
Recent Honors and Awards
- Notre Dame Faculty Research Program Award, 2008
- David Gray Chair Library Fellow, SUNY Buffalo, May-June 2006
- A Menorah for Athena nominated for Koret Jewish Book Award, 2002
Contact Information
367 Decio Hall
(574) 631-7555
sfredman@nd.edu
Postal address
Department of English
356 O’Shaughnessy
Notre Dame, IN 46556
