Mitchell Kooh

Mitchell Kooh is a PhD student and Notebaert Premier Fellow specializing in twentieth-century British and Irish literature. Specifically, his research considers how contemporary theological aesthetics and philosophical theology might be put in conversation with literary theory and criticism. In his dissertation, he proposes a theologically inflected vocabulary informed by, among others, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Erich Przywara to complement prevailing literary critical accounts of the fragment and fragmentation in the works of authors including James Joyce, J. R. R. Tolkien, and T. S. Eliot.

Educational Background: 

BA Wilfrid Laurier University

MA University of Toronto

Recent Scholarly Activity:

“But a Mountain in a Slow Sunset is Not the Sun’: Alienation and Fragmentation in Tolkien’s Theory of Language.” Paper presented at the Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Baylor University, Waco, TX, September 2023.

“Tolkien Studies and the ‘Theological Turn.’” Paper presented at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, July 2022.

“Rhythm and Rupture: Eliot’s Four Quartets and the Analogy of Being.” Paper presented at Catholicism, Literature, and the Arts III, sponsored by Durham University, London, UK, July 2022.

“Communicating Transcendence, Transcending Communication: Balthasar and Boyle on the Catholic Literary Imagination.” Paper presented at the National Communication Association Conference, Seattle WA, November 2021.