Dennis Barone, Ph.D.
Professor of English and American Studies
Contact
Phone: 860.231.5379
E-mail:
dbarone@sjc.edu
Interview in Rain Taxi, Online Edition, Winter 2004
Dr. Barone sees his syllabus as a living organism. He states, "Teaching is like being a Jazz musician. I like to improvise based on the needs of the class. I like to find out the students' weaknesses so I can work on improving their writing and thinking skills."
Dr. Barone hopes college will be a transformative experience for each one of his students. Recently, he was gratified when one of his students wrote him, "As an English major I have learned that it is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debate."
In addition to his teaching duties, Dr. Barone has published extensively. When asked about his influences as a writer, he says, "I came to prose poetry through the essays of Emerson. Emerson's sentences dazzled me in college and in graduate school. That is what I'm after." His collection of prose pieces, Echoes, received the America Award for most outstanding work of fiction by a living American author. Some of his other works include The Returns, Forms/Froms, and The Walls of Circumstance. He has also edited a poetry anthology entitled Visiting Wallace: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Wallace Stevens, and Beyond the Red Notebook, the first collection of critical essays about the novelist Paul Auster.
Dr. Barone was named West Hartford's Poet Laureate for 2009-2011. Dr. Barone also was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Chair, a distinguished Fulbright Lecturing Award, in 1992. And as if he is not industrious enough, he also runs 60 miles a week.
Degrees
Ph.D., M.A., University of Pennsylvania
B.A., Bard College
Recent Research/Publications/ Presentations
Thomas Jefferson Chair, Distinguished Fulbright Lecturing Award, The Netherlands, 1992.
Articles in
Aethon
, American Studies, Critique, Italian Americana, Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Teaching Philosophy.
America Award for the Most Outstanding Work of Fiction by a Living American Author, 1997.
Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster
, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
The Returns
, Sun & Moon, 1996.
Echoes
, Potes & Poets, 1997.
Separate Objects: Selected Poems
, Left Hand Books, 1998.
Temple
of the Rat
, Left Hand Books, 2000.
The Walls of Circumstance
, Avec Books, 2004.
God's Whisper
, Spuyten Duyvil, 2005.
Precise Machine, Quale Press, 2006.
North Arrow, Quale Press, 2008
Editor Small Towns, Big Cities: The Urban Experience of Italian Americans (American Italian Historical Association 2010), Field Report (Quale 2011), Parallel Lines (Shearman Books, 2011) and New Hungers for Old: One Hundered Years of Italian American Poetry (Star Cloud Press, 2011).
