Ben Sammons Adjunct Instructor of English, Durham Technical Community College Assistant Conference Coordinator, 2014 C19 Conference 303 Crest Drive Chapel Hill, NC 27516 [email protected] / (919) 619-7158

Education: Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, English, 2013. M.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, English, 2006. B.A. Mercer University, English (Magna Cum Laude and University Honors), 2004.

Dissertation: “Reforming Readers: Agency and Activism in the Long Progressive Era” Director: Linda Wagner-Martin Readers: Jane Thrailkill, Rebecka Rutledge Fisher, John McGowan, Robert Cantwell

My dissertation argues that between 1860 and 1945, American fiction about poverty dramatized a widespread crisis of agency prompted by the rise of Darwinism, urbanization, and industrial capitalism. Rather than merely abandoning belief in human volition, however, poverty fiction commended a range of ethical postures in the world by assigning readers analogous interpretive roles in the text—some predictably passive but others vigorously engaged. In chapters on Rebecca Harding Davis, William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, and John Steinbeck, I show how the reading of poverty fiction, proceeding in a dialectic between quietism and activism, models the ambivalence with which Americans first confronted the late-modern prospect of determinism.

Honors and Awards: Eliason Summer Fellowship, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011. Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship Finalist (national dissertation competition), 2010. Hunt Award (merit prize), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Fall 2009. Future Faculty Fellowship, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, August 2009. Hollis Award (best M.A. thesis), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006. Booker Fellowship (first-year research assistantship), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004. Achievements in English Award, Mercer University, 2004. Phi Kappa Phi (liberal arts honor society), Mercer University. Sigma Tau Delta (English honor society), Mercer University. Theta Alpha Kappa (religious studies honor society), Mercer University.

Publications: Journal Article: “Compromising Ideals: Agency and Sympathetic Reading in Edith Wharton’s Poverty Literature” (under review) Journal Article: “The Sound of Striving: Hearing What ‘Matters’ in The Souls of Black Folk” (under review)

Book Chapter: “‘Come Right Down With Me’: Poverty, Agency, and Incarnational Reading in the Work of Rebecca Harding Davis,” in Nineteenth-Century American Women Write Religion: Lived Theologies and Literature, ed. Mary Wearn (forthcoming from Ashgate 2014).

Book Chapter: “Flyin’ Anyplace Else: (Dis)engaging Traumatic Memory in Three Plays by Pearl Cleage,” in Reading Contemporary African American Drama: Fragments of History, Fragments of Self, ed. Trudier Harris (New York: Peter Lang, 2007): 99-119.

Book Review: Suzan-Lori Parks: Essays on the Plays and Other Works (McFarland, 2010), ed. Philip C. Kolin; Black Women, Gender & Families 6.1 (Spring 2012): 123-25.

Conferences: Assistant Conference Coordinator; C19 (Conference of the Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists); Chapel Hill, North Carolina (13-16 March 2014).

“Forms of Reading, Forms of Life” (Co-chair); South Atlantic Modern Language Association; Atlanta, Georgia (8-10 November 2013).

“Forms of Reading, Forms of Life: Digital Media” (Co-chair); South Atlantic Modern Language Association; Atlanta, Georgia (8-10 November 2013).

“Agency and the Ethics of Reading in Howells’s Poverty Fiction”; American Literature Association; Boston, Massachusetts (26-29 May 2011).

“Charles Chesnutt’s Technology for a Warm Reception”; Reception Studies Society Conference; Purdue University (11-13 September 2009).

“Excavating Reality, Reforming Reading: Incarnational Aesthetics and Ethics in Rebecca Harding Davis’s ‘Life in the Iron-Mills’”; American Literature Association; Boston, Massachusetts (23-26 May 2007).

“Sound the Alarm!: The Radical Politics of Racialized Aurality in W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk”; New Voices Conference; Georgia State University (20-22 October 2005).

Teaching Experience: Instructor – Expository Writing (English 111); Department of English and Communications, Durham Technical Community College (Fall 2013)

Instructor – Major American Authors: Vocation, Nation, and Self (English 128); Department of English and Comparative Literature; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Fall 2012)

Instructor – Introduction to Fiction: Modernity, Beauty, Community (English 123); Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Fall 2011) Teaching Assistant – Film Analysis (English 142); Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Spring 2011)

Instructor – Introduction to Fiction: Reading, Responsibility, and the Real World (English 123); Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Fall 2009)

Teaching Assistant – Nineteenth-Century British Literature (English 338); Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Fall 2008)

Instructor – Freshman Composition (English 101, 102, and 105); Writing Program, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Fall 2005- Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2010, Spring 2012, Spring 2013)

Departmental Service: Peer Review Committee – Writing Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2009- 2010)

Student Senator – Graduate and Professional Student Fellowship, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2009-2010, 2010-2011)

Professional Membership: South Atlantic Modern Language Association

References: Linda Wagner-Martin, Frank Borden Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (retired); 601 West Rosemary Street, Unit 402; Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2357; [email protected].

Jane Thrailkill, Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Campus Box 3520; Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520; [email protected].

Rebecka Rutledge Fisher, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Director of the Program in Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Campus Box 3520; Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520; [email protected].

John McGowan, Ruel W. Tyson, Jr., Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Campus Box 3520; Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520; [email protected].