Diane Raptosh English Professor- Eyck-Berringer Chair
About Diane Raptosh
Contact
[email protected]
(208) 459-5892
Strahorn Hall, 313
Expertise
Personal Statement
Teaching: I teach a wide range of courses, ranging from basic writing to the literature of medicine. I teach the poetry writing workshop (upper- and lower-division) and the First Year Seminar, along with a variety of special topics courses, such as the Seminar on Adrienne Rich, Prose and Cons: Prison Literature, and The Prison Experience. The latter two courses serve the College's three Criminal Justice Studies minors and provide opportunities for students to learn first-hand about prisons and prison life through field trips to local prisions and jails as well as through exposure to literature by and about inmates. I have continuing interests in writing as a rehabilitative tool and frequently place students in internships in which they facilitate writing workshops for underserved populations. In my capacity as Boise's poet laureate, I hope to give poetry workshops in such places.
Creative Work: I write in such hybrid forms as prose poetry and flash fiction in addition to verse. I see poetry as primarily a mode of inquiry: every poem as a means to revise social, cultural, and aesthetic norms; every poem, an opportunity to reconceive the world. I have been awarded three distinguished fellowships from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Among other honors, I have been the featured artist on "Art and Soul Public Radio Stories: American Masterpieces Celebrates Selected Idaho Artists, Writers, and Performers."
Hobbies: I love to read and travel. I enjoy a wide range of music and offbeat films.
Professional Experience
- The College of Idaho, Professor of English, 1990-present
- Director of The College of Idaho's Criminal Justice Minors
- Residency in the Literary Arts, The Studies of Key West, 2012
- Residency in the Literary Arts, Banff Centre, 2011
- Featured Writer on "The Writers Block," Boise Community Radio, 2011.
- Presenter, "Prison Pedagogies: Teaching and Writing Behind Bars:" AWP Conference, 2010.
- Featured Artist on "Art and Soul Public Radio Stories: American Masterpieces Celebrates Selected Idaho Artists, Writers, and Performers," Fall 2009.
- Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest, Boise High School, Boise Idaho: Judge 2006-2013
Education
- M.F.A., University of Michigan
- B.A., The College of Idaho
Publications
- American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press, 2013) http://www.etruscanpress.org/
- Parents from a Different Alphabet (Guernica Editions, Toronto, 2008)
- Labor Songs (Guernica Editions, Toronto, 1999)
- Just West of Now (Guernica Editions, Toronto, 1992, repr. 1995)
- The Untidy Season: An Anthology of Nebraska Woman Poets (The Backwaters Press, 2013): Rugged Western Individualism."
- Classifieds: An Anthology of Prose Poems (equinox Publishing, 2012): ten poems.
- New Poets of the American West (Many Voices Press, 2010): "Husband."
- Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting (City Works Press, 2010): "Elations."
- The Meadowland Review: poem from Torchie's Book of Days.
- Los Angeles Review, 2008: "Garden Variety."
- Best Poem (bestpoem.wordpress.com): "Elations."
- Fraglit: An Online Magazine of Fragmentary Writing (www.fraglit.com), March 2007: "At the Symposium on the Necessity of Beauty," "Husband," "World Affairs," "Story Problem," "Flight Choreography," "Affliction," and "Betrayal."
- Latitudes, Summer 2007: “Great Books.”
- "O Canada: A Brief Study of Talk, Trade, and the Eavesdroppable." American Review of Canadian Studies, 2009.
- “On Need and Satiety: Some Meditations on Being a Mother Twice,” Families: The Front Line of Pluralism, Wising Up Press, 2008.
- Beyond the Margin: Readings in Italian/Americana, Farleigh Dickinson Press, 1998: “Sentences of Self and Blood and Sea: The Poetry of Sandra M. Gilbert.”