English

Scott Knickerbocker

I teach a diversity of classes at The College of Idaho, including Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Environmental Studies, Environmental Literature, and Western American Literature. My literary interests are primarily 19th- and 20th-Century American Literature, Environmental Studies and Ecocriticism, and Poetry and Poetics. In my doctoral dissertation (University of Oregon, 2006), I focused on the way four 20th-Century American poets—Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Richard Wilbur, and Elizabeth Bishop—demonstrate intense interest in the natural world but resist strict realism and express instead our inevitably figurative relationship with nature. These poets take the paradoxical position that creating artifice, such as poetic form, is the most natural thing for humans to do; therefore, one need not abandon form or figure to write poetry of the earth. They practice what I call sensuous poesis, using formal poetic devices to enact, rather than merely represent, the immediate, embodied experience of nonhuman nature. On a less bookish note, I enjoy playing old-time Appalachian music, country blues, and vintage jazz on guitar, banjo, and fiddle. I also love marathon running, cycling, rock climbing, kayaking, telemark skiing, and backpacking.

Publications

• “‘Bodied Forth in Words’: Sylvia Plath’s Ecopoetics.”  Forthcoming.  College Literature. [35 manuscript pages]
• “Emily Dickinson’s Ethical Artifice.”  Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 15.2 (Summer 2008). [22 manuscript pages].
• “Organic Formalism and John Witte’s The Hurtling.” The Kenyon Review. http://www.kenyonreview.org/kro/knickerbocker.php [17 manuscript pages].
• “Profile.”  An Ear to the Ground: Presenting Writers from Two Coasts.  Ed.  Scott C.  Davis.  Seattle: Cune Press, 1997.  245-46.

Conference Presentations

• “‘Bodied Forth in Words’: Sylvia Plath’s Ecopoetics.”  American Literature Association.  San Francisco, California.  2008.
• “Organic Formalism in John Witte’s The Hurtling.”  Western Literature Association.  Tacoma, Washington.  2007.
• “Environmental Pragmatism in Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain.” Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Spartanburg, S.C. 2007.
• “Modernist Ecopoetics: The Example of Wallace Stevens.” Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Eugene, Oregon. 2005.
• “Emily Dickinson’s Ethical Aesthetics.” Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Boston, Massachusetts. 2002.
• “Cultivating Community: Balancing Authority and Adaptability.” “Composition and Community.” Composition Conference. Eugene, Oregon. 2002.
• “‘Here or nowhere is our heaven’: Spiritually Embodied Ecocentrism in Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” American Academy of Religion. Eugene, Oregon. 2002.

Honors and Awards

• Jane Campbell Krohn Essay Prize, University of Oregon, 2001.
• Post-Doctoral Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2006-2007.
• Graduate Teaching Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2001-2006.

Leadership Positions

• Assistant Director of Composition, University of Oregon, 2005-2006.
• Conference Host. “Making It New.” Composition Conference, Eugene, Oregon. 2005.