Leah Middlebrook , Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature

Associate Professor of Romance Languages

See also Department of Romance Languages

Office: 305 Villard
Ph: 3103
E-mail: middlebr@uoregon.edu

Profile

Leah Middlebrook received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 1998 from the University of California, Berkeley, where she specialized in sixteenth-century Spanish, French and English lyric poetry. She spent 1994-95 in Madrid as a Fulbright scholar. From 1998-2000 she was Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, where she continued on as a lecturer in 2000-2001, before joining COLT and Romance Languages in 2002. Dr. Middlebrook’s research and teaching interests include lyric poetry, theories of the subject, and critical constructions of Western modernity, particularly as they shape our ideas about the “early” modern. She has published essays on Spanish Petrarchism, on the “body politics” of the lyric of Marguerite de Navarre, and on comparative issues in seventeenth-century Spanish and French theater. Her book, Imperial Lyric: New Poetry and New Subjects in Early Modern Spain , is forthcoming from the Pennsylvania State University Press, and she is currently working on an edited volume, provisionally titled: Poiesis and Modernity in the Old and New Worlds. In addition to her primary research fields, Dr. Middlebrook is interested in the contemporary institution of comparative literature, in critical theory, in feminism, and in the 2004 NEA Report, “Reading at Risk.” She asks, “Why are we not reading literature in this culture, and what can I do to help?”

 

Leah Middlebrook received the Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Oregon in 2007.

 

I also teach courses for Romance Languages. Please see my page at: http://rl.uoregon.edu/spanish/professors/middlebrook.shtml

Education

• B.A., 1989, Columbia
• M.A., 1991
• Ph.D., 1998, California, Berkeley. (2002)

Research and teaching interests

early modern Spanish and French literature and culture, lyric poetry, comparative literature.

Leah Middlebrook received the Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Oregon in 2007

Publications

Books

• Imperial Lyric: New Poetry and New Subjects in Early Modern Spain
  (forthcoming, Penn State University Press)

Articles and Book Chapters

• Book chapter, "The Poetics of Modern Masculinity in Sixteenth-Century Spain"
  (forthcoming: Milligan, Gerry and Tylus, Jane, eds. Masculinity in Early Modern Literature of Italy and Spain. Toronto: U. Toronto Press. 2009.)
• On Teaching Petrarch’s "Canzoniere" to Students of Spanish. Dini, Andrea, and Kleinhenz, Christopher, eds. "Approaches to Teaching Petrarch’s Canzoniere". (forthcoming: Publications of the MLA, 2007)
• Fernando de Herrera Invented the Internet: Technologies of Self-containment in the Early Modern Sonnet. Castillo, David and Lollini, Massimo, eds. "Baroque Reason and Its Others". Nashville: Hispanic Issues. 2006. 61-78
• Comedia and Comédie. Bass, Laura, and Greer, Margaret, eds. "Approaches to Teaching the Comedia". New York: Publications of the MLA. 2006. 134-142
• “¿Qué coño es el amor?” Cabello-Castellet, George, et. al., ed. "Cine-Lit. V: Essays on Hispanic Film and Fiction," Corvallis: Cine Lit Publications. 2004. 137-144
• Tout mon office : Body Politics and Family Dynamics in the verse epîtres of Marguerite de Navarre. "Renaissance Quarterly". 54.4 (Winter). New York. Renaissance Society of America. December 2001. 1108 – 1141
• “En Arcadia Betis –The Imperial Lyric of Gutierre de Cetina.” "Bulletin of Hispanic Studies". LXXVIII. 3. Liverpool. Liverpool University Press. July 2001. 297 – 317
• "La mujer petrarquista: ‘hollines y peces.’" Be rgmann, Emilie L., and Middlebrook, Leah W. in Zavala, Iris, ed. "Breve historia feminista de la literatura española (en lengua castellana)". Barcelona. Anthropos. 1995. 145-158

Recent Courses

COLT 101 Introduction to Comparative Literature

• What are the impulses to narrative? To fiction-making? To art? In this introduction to comparative study we will start with one simple premise: people make art to get away from their families, and then they make art to get back home. Sound farfetched? By the end of the quarter, it won’t. In this course we will talk about the works of poetry, art and fiction that we read as symbolic acts of rejection and recuperation of the family, focusing on how writers, filmmakers and visual artists tap into archetypes of parental otherness and parental love to distance themselves from, and then touch back to, "home." We will examine representations of witchy mothers, terrifying fathers and three-story spiders. Along the way, because this is an introductory literature course, we will think about some of the major genres --the epic, the lyric, drama; melodrama, novel, film; literary criticism. In our last meeting we will land "home" on our shared field, to discover that even the discipline of Comparative Literature can be understood as forged in the painful process of leaving, and of coming back.

COLT 203 How to Read Lyric Poetry, and Why

• A course for students who wish to deepen their sense of what poems are and how they work. We will read a range of lyric poems in this course, focusing on strategies for reading, interpreting, and conversing and writing about poetry. Topics covered: What is a lyric poem? How do lyric poems mean? What are "free verse","closed form" and "open form"? How can we begin to determine, and then write about, the relationships of form to content? Finally, we will work on ways to address the challenge posed by poetry: Why do I like (or dislike) this poem, and how do I talk about that in a more rigorous, thoughtful way? As part of the requirements of this course, students will be asked to memorize two lyric poems, and to write and revise one poem. There is also a midterm exam and a final paper.

COLT 399 Feminist Theory

• A survey of the key theoretical movements and texts that informed U.S. Feminism in the 1970s – 1990s. This seminar explores where contemporary American Feminism, struggles for U.S. and global women’s rights, and “Feminist theory” intersect. We will also find much to discuss about where they diverge. Beginning by positioning the so-called “Second Wave” Feminist movement in the U.S. during the late ‘60s and ‘70s in some important intellectual, historical, social and economic contexts, we will move on to examine some of the critiques the movement came in for as Feminist thinking and the quest for social justice matured, and as U.S. Feminists engaged in increasingly complex dialogues with Feminists and women in other cultures. Theories discussed include: equal rights; women’s work; Marxist Feminism; Feminist psychoanalysis; race; gender; Postcolonial Feminism; “post”-Feminism; “Third Wave” Feminism. Requirements for this course include research into the historical reception of one branch of Feminist theory (you will be asked to present the results of your research in a 20 minute in-class presentation), and the preparation of a 15-page paper, which can be either a conventional research paper or a theoretical essay.

COLT 612 Comparative Literature in Academy

• Professionalization in the humanities. Class meetings will be divided between (1) researching the job market and preparing professional dossiers; and (2) revising an article for submission to a refereed journal, and proceeding through the submission process.

COLT 615 Graduate Studies in Comparative Literature

• This is an advanced seminar in which we will examine a number of formulations and uses of the concept of “the subject” in modern, postmodern and post-colonial. Paul Smith’s Discerning the Subject and Judith Butler’s The Psychic Life of Power serve as anchor texts in this course, but in addition to the psychoanalytic, Foucaultian and Marxist approaches that these two books emphasize, we will read some key essays by Ahmad, Jameson, Levinas, Said, Spivak, and critics of your own choosing as participants in an ongoing conversation. Join us as we interrogate the myriad meanings of the term “subject,” what this term has facilitated within critical theory, and what it has complicated or occluded from view.