CURRICULUM VITAE

 

 

Debrah  Raschke                                                     

Dept. of English MS 2650   

Southeast Missouri St. University                          

Cape Girardeau, MO 63701                      

573 651-2623                                                                                  

draschke@.semo.edu 

 

Education:

PhD     University of Massachusetts, English, 1991

MA      Colorado State University, 1977

BA       Colorado State University, Social Sciences, 1974

 

Dissertation: Metaphysical Havens as Sexual Fantasy: Epistemological and Sexual Construction in The Modern British Novel    Director:  Lee Edwards

 

Research and Teaching Interests: 

Twentieth-Century British Literature (Modern and Contemporary), Postcolonial Literature, Contemporary Critical Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Gender Studies

 

Publications:

Books:

Modernism, Metaphysics and Sexuality (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2006).

 

Doris Lessing: Forays into the Millennium (essay collection), with Phyllis Perrakis and Sandra Singer (in progress)

 

 Articles:
"And They Went to Bury Her": Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin and The Robber Bride, with Sarah Appleton Aguiar,

in Adventures of the Spirit, ed Phyllis Perrakis (forthcoming: Ohio State University Press).

                                                               

"Doris Lessing: British Writer, Social Critic, and Seer," in Encyclopedia of British Literature. Ed. David Scot Kastan New York: Oxford UP, 2005.

 

"Faulkner and Modernism," in A Companion to William Faulkner Studies, eds. Charles A.

 Peek and Robert W. Hamblin (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004): 199-124.

 

"Re-Envisioning Plato's Cave: Forster's A Passage to India," in Bloom's Modern Critical

Interpretations: A Passage to India, ed Harold Bloom (Chelsea House: Philadelphia,

2004): 129-45.

 

"Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child: From Fairy-Tale to Monstrosity," in Doris Lessing Studies 23.1 (2003): 10-12, 25.

 

"Boundaries, Vision, and Ethics in Graham Greene's Ministry of Fear," in Perceptions of Religious Faith in the Works of Graham Greene, ed. William Thomas Hill (New York: Peter

Lang, 2002): 175-96.

 

"Doris Lessing and the Spirit of Postcolonialism: Zimbabwe to Star Wars," with Anthony

Chennells, Doris Lessing Studies 21.2 (2001): 1-3.

 

"The 'Heart of the Kingdom': Colonial Politics in Lessing's The Fifth Child," Doris Lessing

Studies 21.2 (2001): 20-26.

 


"'It won't be fine' tomorrow: Lessing's Struggles with Woolf," in Virginia Woolf Out of

Bounds, eds. Jane Goldman and Jessica Berman (New York: Pace UP, 2001): 79-85.

 

 "Cabalistic Gardens: Doris Lessing's  Memoirs of a Survivor," in Spiritual Exploration in

the Works of Doris Lessing, ed. Phyllis Perrakis (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999):

43-54.

 

"To the Lighthouse 'Through the Looking Glass': Woolf's Revisionary Metaphysics," in Virginia Woolf and her Influences, eds. Laura Davis and Jeanette McVicker (New York: Pace UP, 1998): 288-93.

 

 "Breaking the Engagement with Philosophy: Re-envisioning Hetero/Homo Relations in

Maurice," in Queer Forster, eds. Robert Martin and George Piggford (Chicago: U of

Chicago Press, 1997): 151-65. 

 

 "Re-Envisioning Plato's Cave: Forster's A Passage to India," The Comparatist 21 (1997):

10-24.

 

 "Rescuing the Concrete and Other Things Physical from the Dung Heap: Eavan Boland's

Outside History and In a Time of Violence," Colby Quarterly 32 (1996): 135-42.

 

 "Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: False Borders and Subtle Subversions,"

Literature Interpretation Theory 6 (1995): 257-68.

 

 "Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger: Re-envisioning the 'history of the world,'" Ariel 26 (1995): 115-32.

 

 "The Problematic Symbolic: Lacan as Trickster," European Studies Journal 7 (1990): 43-56.

 

 "Fatal Attraction," Cineaste Magazine (Spring 1988): 44-45.

 

 "Creating 'A World Elsewhere': A Cultural Perspective on the Writing Process," ERIC 296-346 (December 1988).

 

 "The Question of Satire in Report from Iron Mountain," Studies in Contemporary Satire 10 (1983): 26-31.

 

Reviews and Short Publications:

“Letter on the Special Issue on Teaching Doris Lessing,” with Tonya Krouse, 26.1 (2006).

 

"Letter from the President," Doris Lessing Studies 24.1-2 (2004): 2

 

"Letter from the President," Doris Lessing Studies 23.2 (2004): 3-5.

 

Review of Vadim Linetski, The Text Which is Difficult to Reach (St. Petersburg Nocent,1998), The Comparatist 22 (1998): 198-201.

 

 Review of Laura Doyle, Bordering on the Body (Oxford 1994), SAR 61 (1996): 154-57.

 


 Review of Linda K. Christian-Smith, Becoming a Woman Through Romance (Routledge 1991), Women's Studies International Forum 15 (1992): 623-24.

 

"A Comment on Clara Juncker's 'Writing (with) Cixous,'" College English 50 (1988): 822-26.

 

Abstract of "The Blood and the Hunt: Atwood's 'Death by Landscape' as Mock Puberty Initiation Rites," Margaret Atwood Newsletter 21 (Fall/Winter 1998): 2. 

 

Abstract of "Contesting Colonial Impulses in Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child," Doris

Lessing Newsletter 19.1 (Winter 1998): 10.

 

Poetry:

 "The Quiet One," Nebraska Review 13 (1984): 41.

 

 "Living Alone," Changing Woman 1 (June 1984): 21.

 

 "Winter Morning," Blue Unicorn 7 (February 1983): 44.

 

 "Subtractions," Colorado North Review 21 (Fall 1981): 6.

 

 "So Many Things Ended," Colorado North Review  21 (Fall 1981): 40.

 

 

 

Conference Presentations

Conference Papers: 

“Race, Coloniality, and Narrative in Doris Lessing’s The Grandmothers, to be presented at the Second Doris Lessing

International Conference, Leeds, England (July 2007).

 

Machiavellian Politics in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville,

February 2006.

 

 "Temptation to Apocalypse in Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride," MLA, Philadelphia,

2004.

 

"Expected and Unexpected Challenges in Teaching Doris Lessing's Memoirs and The Fifth Child, The First International Doris Lessing Conference, New Orleans, April 2004.

 

"Rethinking Literary Research," MLA, San Diego, December 2003.

 

"Burning all Traces," Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, February 2003.

 

"Anorexic Logic and Eugenics in Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child," Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, February 2002.

 

"Metaphysical Horrors in Conrad's Victory," MLA, New Orleans, December 2001.

 

"Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child and Ben in the World: From Fairy Tale to Monstrosity,"    

MLA, New Orleans, December 2001.

 

 "Gender and Metaphysics in Modernism," The Modernist Studies Association,

Philadelphia (UPenn), October 2000.

 

 "'It will not be fine' tomorrow: Lessing's Struggles with Woolf," Tenth Annual International

Virginia Woolf Conference, Baltimore, June 2000.         

 

 "Lawrence and Lessing's Sexualized Metaphysical Spaces," MLA , Chicago, December

1999.

 


 "A 'Small Margin of Error':  The Construction of Colonial Narratives in William Boyd's

Brazzaville Beach," International Narrative Conference, Hanover, NH, April 1999.

 

 "Doris Lessing's Apocalyptic Imagination," Missouri Philological Society, Cape Girardeau,

MO, February 1999.

 

 "The Blood and the Hunt: Atwood's 'Death by Landscape' as Mock Puberty Initiation

Rites," MLA, San Francisco, December 1998.

 

"Rethinking Community in Jacob's Room: Endorsing Transgression and Heresy," Eighth

Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, St. Louis, June 1998.

 

 "Contesting Colonial Perspectives in West Africa: Subaltern Narratives in William Boyd's

Brazzaville Beach," Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, February 1998.

 

 "Colonial Impulses in Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child," MLA, Toronto, December 1997.

 

 "To the Lighthouse 'Through the Looking Glass': Woolf's Revisionary Metaphysics,"

Seventh Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, Plymouth, MA, June 1997.

 

 "Tita's Occult Recipes: Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate as Spiritual Allegory,"

Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, February 1997.

 

 "Cabalistic Gardens: Doris Lessing's  Memoirs of a Survivor," MLA, Washington, DC,

December 1996.

 

 "A Metaphysical Interregnum: Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor

Hoffman," Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, February 1996.

 

 "Eavan Boland's Outside History and In a Time of Violence," Twentieth-Century Literature

Conference, Louisville, February, 1995.

 

 "Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger: Rewriting the Fates, Furies, and Muses," Twentieth-

Century Literature Conference, Louisville, February 1994.

 

 "Western Metaphysics and Other Seduction Narratives," Perceiving the Body: A Symposium, Virginia Commonwealth

University, Richmond, VA, September 1993.

 

 "Thelma and Louise as Polyphonic Feminist Theory," Work in Progress: A Conference on Feminist Scholarship, Old

Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, May 1992.

 

 "Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: False Borders and Subtle Subversions,"

Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, February 1991.

 

 "Exiting Negative Representations," Southeastern Women's Studies Conference,

Roanoke, VA, March 1990.

 

"Reading Strategies: Using Feminist Literary Theory," National Council of Teachers of

English, Baltimore, MD, November 1989.

 


 "Shouting at the Border: The Female Experience and French Feminism," Virginia

 Women's Studies Association Conference, Richmond, VA, October 1989.

 

 "Creating 'A World Elsewhere': The Self as Resisting Society in Contemporary

Composition Theory." Conference on College Composition and Communication, St. Louis,

MO, March 1988.

 

 "Stories Within a Story in Leslie Silko's Ceremony," American Folklore Convention, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1978.

 

Panels Chaired:

"Doris Lessing," Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, KY 2006.

 

"Doris Lessing," Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, KY 2005.

 

"Doris Lessing: Prophet or Maverick," MLA, Philadelphia, 2004.

 

"Terrorism and Trauma," The First International Doris Lessing Conference, New Orleans, April 2004.

 

"Courting the Postmodern: Narrative Transgressions, Experiment in Form," The First

International Doris Lessing Conference, New Orleans, April 2004.

 

"'I'm Just a Storyteller,' She Says," MLA, San Diego, 2003.

 

"Margaret Atwood," Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, February 2002.

 

"Anorexic Logic or Disappearing Bodies and the Politics of Domination in Lessing, Boland,

and Coetzee," Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Louisville, February 2002.

 

"Between Faith and Genre: Re-evaluating Hemingway and Miller," Twentieth-Century

Literature Conference, Louisville, February 2001.

 

"Shifting the Image/Shifting the Story: Traditions, Allusions, and Interests in Margaret Atwood's Works," MLA, Washington D.C., December 2000.

 

 "Woolf and Other Writers II: Vexed Relationships--Byatt, Lessing, and Divakaruni," Tenth

Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, Baltimore, June 2000.

 

 "Atwood And . . .: Comparative Atwood," MLA, Chicago, December 1999.

 

"Breaking Down of Boundaries: Lessing and Autobiography," MLA, San Francisco, December 1998.

 

 "Interrogating the Boundary Between Fiction and Memoir," Missouri Philological Society,

 Cape Girardeau, MO, February 1999.

 

 "Virginia Woolf and Feminist Theory," Seventh Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, 

Plymouth, MA, June 1997.


 

Invited  Lectures:

“Are Women ‘Out of it’?: Rethinking Modernism,” Book Signing for Modernism, Metaphysics and Sexuality,  Southeast Missouri State University

 

"I am Supposed To Do What?" Sigma Tau Delta, Southeast Missouri St. University, 2004.

 

"Urban Legends, Night Creatures, and the Cultural Unconscious." Southeast Missouri St.

University, October 2000.

 

 "Revamping Dracula: The Postmodern Vampire." Common Hour Lecture, Southeast

Missouri St. University, April 2000.

 

"Mapping the Signs in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale," Classic Reader's Guild,

Southeast, March 2000.

 

"Vice and Virtue in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," Southeast Missouri St. University, March

2000.

 

"Paradise Lost and Maria Fornes's Fefu and Her Friends: Two Visions of the Fall," Millennium Project, Southeast Missouri St. University, March 2000.

 

 "Cultural Fairy-Tales: Joyce's Portrait," The Classical Reader's Guild, Southeast Missouri

St. University, March 1999.

 

 "Reading Women's Histories: Theorizing Historical Narrative," Southeast Missouri St.

 University, September 1997.

 

 "Woolf and Contemporary Fiction," Woolf Seminar, College of William & Mary, November

1995.

 

 "A Cow is not Milk: Fixity of the Sign in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale," English

Club, Virginia Commonwealth University, April 1994.

 

 "Lacan's Metaphor and Metonomy: Implications for Poetic Form," Gender and Language

Seminar, Virginia Commonwealth University, November 1993.

 

 "Political Libidos: The Epistemological Construction of Desire," Poststructuralist Theory

Colloquium, Virginia Commonwealth University, March 1991.

 

 "Jane Flax and Jacques Lacan: Reluctant Aesthetics," Feminist Theory Colloquium,

 University of Richmond, January 1991.

 

 "Changing the Subject," Discussion Round Table, Central Virginia Faculty Consortium,

Virginia Commonwealth University, October 1990.

 

 "Medieval Brothels, Augustinian Authority, and the Question of Mastery: Applying

Feminist Theories to Chaucer's 'The Wife of Bath,'" Virginia Commonwealth University,

April 1990.

 

 "This Is and Is Not Lacan," English Department Colloquium, Virginia Commonwealth

University, March 1989.

 

Editorial Reviewing

Editorial Board: Doris Lessing Studies

 

Guest Co-editor, with Tonya Krouse (University of Northern Kentucky), Doris Lessing Studies, 26.1 (2006): 2-3.

 

Guest Co-Editor, with Anthony Chennells (University of Zimbabwe), Doris Lessing Studies,

21.2 (2001).

 

Reviewer for PMLA, Mosaic, The Comparatist, Ariel, Studies in the Novel, and South Atlantic Review, essay collection on Graham Greene.


 

Teaching Experience:

2006-              Professor, Southeast Missouri State University

 

2001-2006          Associate Professor, Southeast Missouri State University

 

1997-2001          Assistant Professor, Southeast Missouri State University

 

Undergraduates Courses: Masterpieces of English Literature II, Victorian Studies, Mythic Dimensions of Literature, Rhetoric and Critical Thinking, Victorian Studies,Masterpieces of English Literature I

                       

Graduate Courses: Research in English Studies, Contemporary Anglophone Literature/Contemporary Theory, Early Twentieth-Century British Literature

 

Graduate Independent Studies: Victorian Cultural Studies, Narrative Strategies in Atwood, Diamant, and Reynolds; Postcolonial Literature & Postcolonial Theory, Literary Theory; Studies in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century British Literature, Contemporary Theory, Poststructuralist Theory and Legal Theory, A.S. Byatt; Poststructuralist Theory

 

1996               Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Richmond

Feminist Literary Theory (Graduate)          

 

 

1995-96         Visiting Assistant Professor, College of William & Mary

Spring 1997   Major American Writers, Freshman Seminar, Contemporary Fiction & Millennium Perils

 

1992-94                   Visiting Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University, Twentieth-Century British Literature, Modern Novel, Feminist Literary Theory, Survey of British Literature I and II, Composition and Rhetoric,  Gender Construction in the Modern Novel

 

1988-92         Instructor, Virginia Commonwealth University

 

1984-88         Teaching Assistant for Writing Program, University of Massachusetts

 

1986-87         Instructor, English Department, University of Massachusetts

Modern Novel 1900-1930, Modern Novel 1930-60


 

1977-80         Teaching Assistant, Colorado State University: Freshman and Advanced       Composition

 

Honors and Grants:

Graduate Research Funding Grant, Spring 2002

Graduate School Research Grant, Fall 2001

Graduate School Research Grant, Fall 2000

Graduate School Research Grant, Fall 1999

Provost Funding, Professional Development Spring 1999 ($600)

University Studies Funding, Professional Development, Fall 1998 ($200)

 

Kent Library Endowment Grant: Contemporary theory, 2003 ($1,753)

Kent Library Endowment Grant: Victorian Studies, 2003 ($1,200)

Kent Library Endowment Grant: Nineteenth-Century British Collections and Women's Studies Collections,

2000  ($2610)

Kent Library Endowment Grant: Twentieth-Century British Collections, 2000 ($2,000)

Special Library Allocation Grant: Modern British Collections, 2000 ($388)

Kent Library Endowment Grant: Gender Studies, 1999 ($2,999)

Special Library Allocation Grant: Literary Theory 1998, ($499)

Kent Library Endowment Grant: Modern British Collections, 1998 ($2,959)

Special Library Allocation Grant: Modern British Collections, 1997 ($485)

 

University Service:

Graduate Council: Southeast Fall 2000-2003

Task Force for Academic Excellence (Graduate Council) 2000-2003

Task Force for Capstone Experience (Graduate Council) 2001-2003

 

Women's Studies Board: VCU 1989-1994

 

College Service:

Library Committee and Liaison: Southeast Fall 1999-

 

Departmental Service:

Task Force for Faulkner-Twain Conference 2006

Chair of Library Committee: Southeast Fall 1999-

Graduate Committee 1997-

Assessment Outcomes Committee: Southeast 1998-

Literature Committee: Southeast 1997-

Search Committee Member for Multicultural position 2004

Judge for Journey, essay contest: Southeast 2000

Participant in Job Search Graduate Symposium: Southeast Fall 1997 and Spring 1998

Director of Graduate Studies: Southeast Fall 1999-2002

Chair of Graduate Committee Fall 1999-2002

Strategic Planning Committee: Southeast 1998

 

Service to the Profession

            Webmaster for the Doris Lessing Society Website 2003-         

            Executive officer for the Doris Lessing Society

            President of the Doris Lessing Society (Allied Organization of MLA) 2003-2006

Co-Director of the First International Doris Lessing Conference 2002-2004

Vice-President of the Doris Lessing Society 2000-2002

Co- Director of the Doris Lessing Conference (New Orleans) 2002-2004       

Secretary /Historian for the Margaret Atwood Society 2002-04

Executive Officer of the Doris Lessing Society (Allied Organization of MLA): 2000-

Executive Officer of the Margaret Atwood Society (Allied Organization of MLA) 1998-         

MLA Liaison to the Doris Lessing Society 2003-2006

MLA Liaison to Margaret Atwood Society 1998-2000

Essay Judge for 2006 Margaret Atwood Annual Society Awards: Undergraduate essay

Essay Judge for 2005 Margaret Atwood Annual Society Awards: Undergraduate essay

Essay Judge for the 2004 Margaret Atwood Annual Society Wards: Undergraduate essay

Essay Judge for 1998 Margaret Atwood Annual Society Awards: Dissertation chapters,

theses, and graduate papers

 

Professional Memberships:

Modernist Studies Association

Society for the Study of Narrative

Margaret Atwood Society

Doris Lessing Society

            International Virginia Woolf Society

Modern Language Association