Korine Powers

My work concentrates on violence and masculinity in post-war American film and fiction. I am particularly interested in the interrelationship and discussion of generic masculine icons—the cowboy, the detective, the psychopath—in popular American texts. How do these figures intertwine popular film and the novel? How do their backwards-gazing narratives (whether to the 1890s or the 1980s) inform America’s cultural memory of the past? How has the post-war pop psychology boom fundamentally incorporated violent mental illness into the American generic hero? What, if anything, separates the popular cowboy from the popular psychopath in modern media? My exploration of the generic portrayal of masculinity is inspired in part by historical critics like Richard Slotkin, and more largely by gender and race theorists, mostly notably Sedgwick, Butler, Halberstam, hooks, and West.

 

 

 

Education
Ph.D. in English and American Literature, Boston University, expected 2021
M.A. in English and American Literature, Boston University, 2018
B.A., University of Richmond

Publications
“The Man with Five Names: Hombre on Race and the Cinematic Western.” “If It Sounds like Writing”: Critical Essays on Elmore Leonard, ed. Charles Rzepka. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Forthcoming 2020.
“Hannibal Lecter as Avenging War Orphan.” Twentieth-Century Literature, Special Issue, Forthcoming Spring 2020.
On Beckett Review Essay. The Beckett Circle (Spring 2019).

Selected Presentations
Panel Organizer, “Madness in American Civilization.” Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Boston, Massachusetts, 5-8 March, 2020.
Co-Moderator, “NSFW Talkback.” Lucy Kirkwood’s NSFW, Charlestown Working Theater, 3 November, 2018.
“Dragon Age: Inquisition and the Limits of the Avatar.” #NoFilter: Unmasking Digital Engagement and Real World Influence, Boston University, 21 June, 2018.
“Hannibal Lecter as Avenger and War Orphan,” Human Body and World War II Conference, University of Oxford, UK, 23 March 2018.

Courses Taught
Writing 120: Freshman Writing Seminar: Madness and American Culture, Fall 2019
English 121: Reading World Literature, Spring 2018
English 120: The Western: Text and Screen, Fall 2017
Writing 150: Freshman Research Seminar: The American Serial Killer, Spring 2017
Writing 100: Freshman Writing Seminar: The American Serial Killer, Fall 2016