Michael Newbury
Fletcher D. Proctor Professor of American History
- Office
- Axinn Center 252
- Tel
- (802) 443-5280
- newbury@middlebury.edu
- Office Hours
- Fall 2024: Tuesday 8:30-10:00, Thursday 12:30-1:30, and by appointment.
Michael Newbury is Professor of American Studies and English and American Literatures and Fletcher D. Proctor of American History. He received a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. from Yale University and has taught at Middlebury since 1993. He is the author of Figuring Authorship in Antebellum America and various scholarly articles. He led a group collaborating on The Collinwood Fire, 1908, a multiple-award winning online project about a deadly elementary school fire outside Cleveland, Ohio. Some of his scholarly and teaching interests are: the American Colonial period, Nineteenth and early-Twentieth century American Literature, Science Fiction, Madness in Literature, Comics, Imperialism, Disaster, Horror and the Gothic, and Consumer and Mass Culture.
Courses Taught
AMST 0225
Gothic and Horror
Course Description
Gothic and Horror
This course examines the forms and meanings of the Gothic and horror over the last 250 years in the West. How have effects of fright, terror, or awe been achieved over this span and why do audiences find such effects attractive? Our purpose will be to understand the generic structures of horror and their evolution in tandem with broader cultural changes. Course materials will include fiction, film, readings in the theory of horror, architecture, visual arts, and electronic media. 3 hrs. lect./disc. 3 hrs lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
AMST 0253
Current
Science Fiction
Course Description
Science Fiction
Time travel, aliens, androids, robots, corporate and political domination, reimaginings of race, gender, sexuality and the human body--these concerns have dominated science fiction over the last 150 years. But for all of its interest in the future, science fiction tends to focus on technologies and social problems relevant to the period in which it is written. In this course, we'll work to understand both the way that authors imagine technology's role in society and how those imaginings create meanings for science and its objects of study and transformation. Some likely reading and films include Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Ridley Scott, Blade Runner, and works by William Gibson, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler and other contemporary writers. (Students who have taken FYSE 1162 are not eligible to register for this course). 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
AMST 0304
Upcoming
The Graphic Novel
Course Description
The Graphic Novel
In this course we will study some of the most widely respected graphic novels produced in the last thirty years. Our purpose will be to understand how the form works and is structured by its dual, but sometimes competing, interests in the verbal and the visual, and to think about distinct styles of illustration. We will also think about how landmark examples have shaped the form. Working with software designed for the purpose, students will use photographs to produce short comics of their own. Possible texts include: Alan Moore, Watchmen; Art Spiegelman, Maus; Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan; Alison Bechdel, Fun Home.3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
AMST 0500
Current
Upcoming
Independent Study
Course Description
Independent Study
Select project advisor prior to registration.
Terms Taught
AMST 0701
Current
Senior Work I
Course Description
Senior Work
(Approval required)
Terms Taught
AMST 0710
Upcoming
Honors Thesis
Course Description
Honors Thesis
For students who have completed AMST 0705, and qualify to write two-credit interdisciplinary honors thesis. on some aspect of American culture. The thesis may be completed on a fall/winter schedule or a fall/spring schedule. (Select a thesis advisor prior to registration)
Terms Taught
AMST 1045
Upcoming
Graphic Novel Postmodern City
Course Description
The Graphic Novel and the Postmodern City
From dystopian visions of isolation and alienation to utopian illustrations of soaring towers and integrated communities, comics and graphic novels since the 1970s have represented a range of cityscapes and ways of living in them. Our efforts will focus on understanding how comics work as a cultural form distinct from others and how various artists and writers have imagined urban space in relatively recent cultural history. Some texts might include: Daniel Clowes, Ghost World; Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta; Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do; and G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphono, Ms. Marvel.
Terms Taught
Requirements
CRWR 0560
Current
Upcoming
Special Project: Writing
Course Description
Special Project: Creative Writing
Approval Required.
Terms Taught
CRWR 0701
Current
Upcoming
Senior Thesis:Creative Writing
Course Description
Senior Thesis: Creative Writing
Discussions, workshops, tutorials for those undertaking one-term projects in the writing of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction.
Terms Taught
ENAM 0500
Special Project: Lit
Course Description
Special Project: Literature
Approval Required.
Terms Taught
ENAM 0700
Senior Thesis:Critical Writing
Course Description
Senior Thesis: Critical Writing
Individual guidance and seminar (discussions, workshops, tutorials) for those undertaking one-term projects in literary criticism or analysis. All critical thesis writers also take the Senior Thesis Workshop (ENAM 700Z) in either Fall or Spring Term.
Terms Taught
ENGL 0263
Upcoming
American Psycho
Course Description
American Psycho: Disease, Doctors, and Discontents
What constitutes a pathological response to the pressures of modernity? How do pathological protagonists drive readers toward the precariousness of their own physical and mental health? The readings for this class center on the provisional nature of sanity and the challenges to bodily health in a world of modern commerce, media, and medical diagnoses. We will begin with 19th century texts and their engagement with seemingly "diseased" responses to urbanization, new forms of work, and new structures of the family and end with contemporary fictional psychopaths engaged in attacks on the world of images we inhabit in the present. Nineteenth century texts will likely include stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Later 20th-century works will likely include Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs, Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, and Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho. (Formerly ENAM 0263)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0287
Current
Posthuman Medicine
Course Description
Posthuman Medicine: Morals, Machines, and Bodies
Medical treatments and technologies now keep people alive when they once surely would have died. But the increasing power of medicine has also raised nightmarish possibilities of lives controlled, squandered, or sacrificed to a system that often alienates patients, is centered on profit, and has a long history of treating marginal populations recklessly. How do science fiction writers, doctors, film makers, memoirists, and healthcare corporations portray an ever more medicalized vision of human experience and human bodies? Texts and films for the course will include HG Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Atul Gawande, Complications; Octavia Butler, Clay’s Ark; Michael Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Karen Russell, Sleep Donation, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0500
Current
Upcoming
Special Project: Lit
Course Description
Special Project: Literature
Approval Required. (Formerly ENAM 0500)
Terms Taught
ENGL 0700
Current
Upcoming
Senior Thesis:Critical Writing
Course Description
Senior Thesis: Critical Writing
Individual guidance and seminar (discussions, workshops, tutorials) for those undertaking one-term projects in literary criticism or analysis.
Terms Taught
HIST 0445
Vermont Life Collab Web
Course Description
Vermont Life’s Vermont: A Collaborative Web Project
Students in this course will work collaboratively to build an online history project aimed at a wide audience. Since 1946, Vermont Life magazine has created particular images of the landscape, culture, and recreational possibilities in the state. Our goal will be to construct a website that examines the evolution of these images and the meaning of the state over time, paying particular attention to consumerism, the environment, tourism, urban-rural contrasts, local food movements, and the ways that race, class, and gender influence all of these. The course is open to all students and requires collaborative work but not any pre-existing technological expertise. 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements