MARIA ALISON DIKCIS Northwestern University, English Department, University Hall 215, 1897 Sheridan Rd, Evanston, IL 60208 [email protected] | www.mariadikcis.com

Research and Teaching Interests Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Poetry; Comparative Poetics; African American, Asian American, and Latinx Literatures; Critical Race and Ethnic Studies; Lyric Theory; Media Aesthetics; Film and Television; Critical Prison Studies; Art and Activism

Education Northwestern University Ph.D. English, expected June 2021 Critical Theory Graduate Certificate Teaching Certificate, Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching

The University of Chicago M.A. Humanities, Poetics Option, 2013 Thesis: “‘Further and further inside, the certitude of absence’: Liminality, (Non)presence, and the Poetics of Embodiment in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee”

Loyola University Chicago B.A. English, summa cum laude, 2012 B.S. Psychology, summa cum laude, 2012 French Language Minor, Phi Beta Kappa, Dean’s List, English Departmental Honors

Dissertation Ink, Wave, Signal, Code: Multiethnic American Poetry’s Media Ecologies After 1965 Committee: Harris Feinsod (chair), John Alba Cutler, James J. Hodge, Michelle Huang Since the 1960s, Latinx, Black, and Asian American poets have reshaped poetic production and circulation practices by experimenting with several media beyond print. I examine four technological sites—mimeograph machines, vinyl records and CDs, televisions, and computers—to show how media ecologies produce, rather than simply portray, formations of race. By attending to racial logics across the tangible, audible, and visible layers of media, this project argues that poetic mediations of minoritized identity challenge normative understandings of media’s alleged democratizing function.

Publications Peer-Reviewed Article “Gertrude Stein Learns to Code: Brian Kim Stefans’ Kluge: A Meditation and the Corruptibility of Modernist Form.” ASAP/Journal. (forthcoming; 8,000 words)

Chapter in Edited Volume “Poetics of Transcultural Agency in 20th and 21st Century Ethnic American Poetry.” The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics Since 1900. Ed. Daniel Morris. (invited; in progress)

Reviews and Essays Review of semiautomatic, by Evie Shockley. Chicago Review 62:4/63:1/2, The Black Arts Movement in Chicago (2019): 399-403. “Panorama: Essays and Images from Life on the Rails—Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Photographs.” CB&Q: Building an Empire, An Archive from the Newberry Library. 2013. https://publications.newberry.org/cbqempire/exhibits/show/panorama/panorama-1.

Dikcis CV 2

Selected Poetry “The Unicorn in Captivity: 1:23am” and “Disbelief is Fertile.” Palimpsest: Yale Graduate Literary & Arts Magazine Vol. IX: TRANS[ ] (2019): 46-47. “Happy Birthday.” Graze 7 (2016): 66-67. “Station Briefly, the Seasons.” Colloquium: The First Two Years (An Anthology) (2014): 69-70. “Woman at Her Toilette” and “Station Briefly, the Seasons.” Colloquium 2 (2013). “Msot Wulod Jsut Say Tnahk You.” Diminuendo 14, no. 2 (2012): 20.

Selected Awards and Fellowships Career Development Boot Camp Fellowship–Modern Language Association, 2020 A. Owen Aldridge Prize for Outstanding Essay by a Graduate Student, Honorable Mention– American Comparative Literature Association, 2019 Humanities Without Walls Pre-Doctoral Career Diversity Fellowship–Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Humanities Research Institute, 2018 HASTAC Scholar–Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance & Collaboratory, 2018 Summer Institute Cologne Grant, Urbanism and Hip Hop Seminar–University of Cologne, 2016 Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellowship, Poetry and Poetics–Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Graduate School, Northwestern University, 2014

Conference Presentations “Anti-Portraits of Ink and Earth: Kara Walker’s Silhouettes and Ana Mendieta’s Siluetas,” Cultural Studies Association, Columbia College Chicago, 2020 (Virtual) “Turing Tests and Robot Love Poems: Technological Vulnerability in Franny Choi’s Soft Science and Margaret Rhee’s Love, Robot,” American Comparative Literature Association, Chicago, 2020 (Canceled) “Down and Dirty: Mimeography and DIY Activism of the Underground Press Revolution,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Loyola University Chicago, 2019 “In Print, Out of Bounds: Poetry of the Penal Press and the ‘Question’ of Creative Freedom,” American Studies Association, Honolulu, 2019 “All in a Day’s Werk: LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs’ TwERK and the Performance of Racial Sonic Labor,” American Literature Association, African American Literature and Culture Society, Boston, 2019 “Printed Internets: Pseudo-autobiography and Digital Interruptions in 21st-Century Multiethnic Poetry,” Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, University of Cincinnati, 2019 “Analog Internet: Pseudo-autobiography and the Poetics of Print Digitality in 21st-Century Multiethnic Writing,” Modern Language Association, Chicago, 2019 “Thinking Beyond Surfaces: Brian Kim Stefans’ Kluge: A Meditation and the Avatars of Gertrude Stein,” American Comparative Literature Association, University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 “Please Stay Tuned: The Televisual Poetics of Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric,” Seminar in American Literature, The Newberry Library, Chicago, 2018 “Being ‘Online’: Provisional Identities and Digital Representation in Mónica de la Torre’s Public Domain and Trisha Low’s The Compleat Purge,” Screen Cultures Program, Department of Radio/Television/Film, Northwestern University, Evanston, 2017 “The Erotics of Wordplay: Linguistic Jouissance and Alternative Sexual Politics in Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary,” Summer Institute Cologne, Germany, 2016

Dikcis CV 3

Teaching Experience Northwestern University Instructor of Record English 105: “Writing Television: Theory, Poetics, Politics,” Spring 2018 First-year expository writing course for students from diverse majors in the arts and sciences

Teaching Assistant English 385: “The Cinema of Always-On Computing,” Professor James J. Hodge, Fall 2020 Supported online learning through remote instruction and film screenings English 277: “Introduction to Latina/o Literature,” Professor John Alba Cutler, Winter 2018 Gave four lectures on critical analysis, argumentation, essay organization, and writing style English 214: “Introduction to Film and Its Literatures,” Professor Nick Davis, Spring 2017 Led two weekly discussion sections Spanish 277: “Introduction to Latina/o Literature,” Professor Frances R. Aparicio, Winter 2017 Gave one lecture on the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and significance of Afro-Latinidad English 214: “Introduction to Film and Its Literatures,” Professor Nick Davis, Winter 2016 Led two weekly discussion sections English 234: “Introduction to Shakespeare,” Professor Susan Phillips, Fall 2015 Led two weekly discussion sections and gave one lecture on constructions of race in Othello

Other Teaching Experience The Odyssey Project, Illinois Humanities “Tweets, ’Grams, Emoji, Texts: The Literary Forms of 21st-Century Social Media,” Fall 2019 Introductory course on new media translations of classic literature for alumni of the Odyssey Project—a free, college-credit granting humanities program for low-income adults; Taught works by Twitter users/Shakespeare; Rupi Kaur, Atticus, and Nayyirah Waheed; Amazon Mechanical Turk workers/Herman Melville; Sophia Le Fraga/Samuel Beckett

Northwestern Prison Education Program, Cook County Department of Corrections–Division 6 “Introduction to Poetry: Voices, Rhythms, and Visions of Chicago,” Spring 2019 Skills-based course on the history of Chicago poetry for incarcerated students; Taught poems and songs by Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Stuart Dybek, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Nate Marshall, Chance the Rapper, Daniel Borzutzky, Mayda Del Valle, Eve L. Ewing, José Olivarez, Fatimah Asghar

Splash! at Northwestern “Poetry’s Oddities, or What in the World is a Zeugma?” Spring 2019 Writing workshop on the abecedarian, ghazal, pantoum, villanelle, Sapphic stanza, zeugma, and terza rima for Chicagoland high schoolers participating in college immersion program; Taught poems by Jessica Greenbaum, Rumi, Agha Shahid Ali, Kiandra Jimenez, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Xochiquetzal Candelaria, Sappho (Anne Carson), W.S. Merwin, Shakespeare

Northwest Cultural Council, Poets & Writers “Contemporary Conceptualisms,” Fall 2015 Writing workshop on “uncreative” and ready-made poetic practices for senior citizens; Taught poems by Lisa Robertson, Harryette Mullen, Christian Bök, Kenneth Goldsmith, Judith Goldman

Dikcis CV 4

University Service and Outreach Director of Cook County Jail Partnership–Northwestern Prison Education Program, 2020-present Associate Director of Cook County Jail Partnership and Associate Director of Media & Campus Relations–Northwestern Prison Education Program, 2019-2020 Graduate Student Advisory Committee–Northwestern Prison Education Program, 2019-present Founder and Facilitator, Critical Prison Studies Reading Group–Program in Critical Theory, Northwestern University, 2019-2020 Mentor and Workshop Leader, Poetry in the Schools: The Voice Within Us–Northwestern Poetry & Poetics Colloquium and Youth & Opportunity United (Y.O.U.), 2018

Additional Training Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern University Digital Humanities Pedagogy Workshop, 2018-19 A ten-session workshop on integrating methods, tools, and scholarship from the digital humanities into the university classroom

Ordinary Media Research Workshop, 2016-17 An interdisciplinary workshop on “always-on” technologies such as smartphones, Google search, and social media and their interfacings with emerging art and literature

Chicago Studies Research Center, The Newberry Library Chicago Studies and the Archive, 2017 A three-part seminar introducing current theories of archival praxis through sessions focused on Chicago collections at the Newberry, archive and narrative, and Chicago journalism

Professional Experience Poetry Staff Member–Chicago Review Literary Magazine, October 2018-present Research Assistant, Professor Harris Feinsod–Department of English, Northwestern University, September 2016-February 2017 Editorial Assistant–RHINO Poetry Journal, May 2015-September 2015 Center Administrator–The Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture, The University of Chicago, September 2013-September 2014 Manuscripts and Archives Intern–Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections, The Newberry Library, June 2013-August 2013

Languages and Skills English–native French–advanced reading, writing, speaking proficiency Spanish–intermediate reading proficiency Computer–Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe Creative Suite, HTML and CSS, WordPress, ArcGIS, PastPerfect, Social Media, Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

Professional Memberships Modern Language Association American Comparative Literature Association Society for Cinema and Media Studies Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States

Dikcis CV 5

References Available upon request