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Aaron Shaheen
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Department of English
615 McCallie Ave.
Chattanooga, TN 37403
Work: (423) 425-5398
Work Fax: (423) 425-2282
1515 Bailey Ave.
Chattanooga, TN 37404
Home/Cell: (423) 443-5415
Email: Aaron-Shaheen@utc.edu
Employment
UC Foundation Associate Professor of English, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga,
Aug. 2005-Present
Education
Ph. D. in American Studies, University of Florida, December 2005
Dissertation: “Androgynous Democracy: American Modernity and the Dual-Sexed
Body Politic”
M. A. in English, University of South Carolina, May 1999
Major Concentration: Twentieth-century American literature
Thesis Title: “Sons of Pasiphaë: Original Sin and Lust for the Land in Robert Penn
Warren’s Brother to Dragons”
B. A. in English, Phi Beta Kappa, University of Utah, June 1996
Minor: Russian
Peer-Reviewed Books
Androgynous Democracy: Modern American Literature and the Dual-Sexed Body Politic.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010.
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
(forthcoming) “Religion, Rationality, and the Course of History in Jack London’s
The Iron Heel.” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Jack London.
Ed. Kenneth K. Brandt and Jeanne Campbell Reeseman. New York: Modern
Language Association, 2015. 77-84.
“Spencerian Theory and Modern Rites of Passage in John Dos Passos’s
Three Soldiers.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 57.2 (Summer 2015):
162-81.
“Strolling through the Slims of the Past: Ralph Werther’s Love Affair with Victorian
Womanhood in Autobiography of an Androgyne.” PMLA 128.4 (Oct. 2013):
923-37.
“Androgyny and Social Upheaval: The Gendered Pretext for John Crowe Ransom’s New
Critical Approach.” Rereading the New Criticism. Eds. Miranda Hickman and
John D. McIntyre. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012. 65-82.
“The Competing Narratives of Modernity in Jack London’s The Iron Heel.” American
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Literary Realism 41.1 (2008): 35-51.
“‘I Have Heard the Mermaids Screaming’: Modern Femininity and Donald
Davidson’s Attempt to Form an All-Male Coterie of Southern Letters.” Southern
Studies 14.2 (Fall 2007): 49-68.
“‘The Social Dusk of That Mysterious Democracy’: Race, Sexology, and
the New Woman in Henry James’s Bostonians.” ATQ: 19th C. American
Literature and Culture 19.4 (2005): 281-99.
“Endless Frontiers and Emancipation from History: Horatio Alger’s Reconstruction of
Time and Space in Ragged Dick.” Children’s Literature 33 (2005): 20-40.
(reprint of) “Endless Frontiers and Emancipation from History: Horatio Alger’s
Reconstruction of Time and Space in Ragged Dick.” Newsboy 45.6 (2007): 9-15.
“Henry James’s Southern Mode of Imagination: Men, Women, and the Image of
the South in The Bostonians.” Henry James Review 24.2 (Spring 2003): 180-92.
“Seizing the ‘Bounty of This Virtuous Tree’: The Sexual Underpinnings of
Jeffersonian Pastoralism in Brother to Dragons.” Southern Literary Journal 34.2
(Spring 2002): 73-96.
“Uncovering the ‘Man of the Heart’: Constructing the Female Self as Male in the
Religious Rhetoric of Sophia Hume’s Exhortation to the Inhabitants of SouthCarolina.” South Carolina Review 30.2 (Spring 2000): 90-102.
“Claiming the Title: Subverting the Masculine Privilege of Naming in Dickinson’s
Poetry.” Notes on Teaching English 25 (1998): 11-17.
Work in Progress
The Prosthetic Spirit: Great War Rehabilitation in American Literature and
Culture (first draft of manuscript complete; currently proposing to presses)
Non-Peer Reviewed Articles
“American Literature: Contemporary.” Encyclopedia of Religion in America.
Vol. 3. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams, eds. Washington, DC,
2001. 1252-59.
(Contrib. report on Dos Passos lecture in) “The Great War Symposium at the University
of South Carolina,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1997, ed.
Matthew J. Bruccoli and George Garret (Detroit: Gale, 1998), 217-26.
Conference Presentations
“Dos Passos’s One Man’s Initiation: Facial Mutilation and the End of Medieval Idealism.”
First Biennial John Dos Passos Conference. Chattanooga, TN. October 10-11, 2014.
“World War I, Prosthesis, and the Hun: An American Perspective on the Souls of
Germans.” Modern and Classical Languages and Literature Colloquium in the
Humanities. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. September 25, 2014.
“Straight, Pure, and Natural: Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises in the Age of
Penile Prosthesis.” American Literature Association Conference. Washington,
D. C. May 22-25, 2014.
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“Staring World War I in the Face: The Confluence of Spirit and Matter in Anna Coleman
Ladd’s Prosthetic Masks.” UTC Works in Progress Series. Chattanooga, TN.
November 14, 2013.
“Facial Disfigurement in Dos Passos's Fiction: Cultivating Student Interest
in World War I.” American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA.
May 22-26, 2013.
Modernism in the Shadow of the Epic Tradition: Teaching John Dos Passos’s One Man’s
Initiation and 1919. American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA.
May 24-27, 2012.
“Spencerian Theory and Modern Rites of Passage in John Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers.”
American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA. May 22-25, 2011.
“Four Ways of Looking at a Text.” Tennessee Council of Teachers of English Annual
Conference. Chattanooga, TN. Sept. 24-25, 2010.
“Strolling through the Slums of the Past: The Love Affair with Victorian Womanhood in
Ralph Werther’s Autobiography of an Androgyne.” Modernist Studies
Association Annual Conference. Victoria, Canada. Nov. 11-14, 2010.
“In the Saddle with the Idaho Kid: Social Credit and Ezra Pound’s Frontier Thesis.”
Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference. Long Beach. Nov. 2-4, 2007.
“The Competing Narratives of Modernity in Jack London’s The Iron Heel.” UTC Works
in Progress Series. Chattanooga, TN. October 11, 2006.
“The Androgynization of American Culture: Henry James’s Late Writings.” TwentiethCentury Literature and Culture Conference. Louisville, KY. Feb 23-26, 2006.
“How the Mormons Became White: The Spatial and Racial Negotiations of the Brigham
Young Monument in Downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.” American Studies
Association Annual Conference. Washington, DC. November 3-6, 2005.
“The Complexities of Primitive Accumulation: Grace Lumpkin’s Proletarian Feminism
in 1930s America.” Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference. Seminar
Panel Position Paper. Vancouver, BC. October 23-24, 2004.
(moderator for) “Better Hells and Gardens” Panel. Marxist Reading Group Conference:
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. March 25-27, 2004.
“Evolking the South: Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and the Politics of Southern
Identity.” Robert Penn Warren Circle Conference: Western Kentucky University,
Bowling Green, KY. April 23-25, 2003.
“Have You Seen My Signified?: Original Sin and Metanarrative Structure in Robert Penn
Warren’s Poetry.” Robert Penn Warren Circle Conference: Western Kentucky
University, Bowling Green, KY. April 19-21, 2002.
“‘The Scream of Agony, the Moan of Bliss’: Linking the Modern to the Postmodern in
Warren’s Poetics.” 2001 Northeast MLA Conference. Hartford, CT. March 30-31.
“Blackface and the ‘Social Unconscious’ in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” South Atlantic
American Studies Association Conference. Atlanta, GA. February 22-25, 2001.
“The Unfulfilled Code: Oversexed and Desexed Cavaliers in John Crowe Ransom’s
‘Necrological.’” 1998 Southern Writers/Southern Writing Conference: University
of Mississippi, Oxford, MS. July 27-28.
“Claiming the Title: Subverting the Masculine Privilege of Naming in Dickinson’s
Poetry.” 1998 Georgia-Carolinas College English Association: Coastal Carolina
University, Conway, SC February 27-28.
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Teaching Experience
ENG 5970-Graduate Seminar: World War I in American Literature (UTC)
ENG 548-Graduate Seminar: American Literature in the Age of Modern Sexuality (UTC)
ENG 548-Graduate Seminar: Nationalism in Modern American Literature (UTC)
ENG 5360-The American Renaissance, 1820-1860 (UTC)
ENG 537-Graduate Seminar: American Realism and Naturalism (UTC)
ENG 539-Graduate Seminar: Contemporary American Literature (UTC)
ENG 538-Graduate Seminar: Modern American Literature (UTC)
ENG 199/499-World War I in British Literature (UTC at Oxford, Oxford, UK)
ENG 499/447-The American Renaissance (UTC)
ENG 4970-Special Topics: Desire and Crisis in Modern American Literature (UTC)
ENG 447-American Expatriate Literature (UTC)
ENG 447-Russian Literature (UTC)
ENG 435-Modern American Drama (UTC)
ENG 3210-American Women Writers (UTC)
ENG 315-American Literature since World War II (UTC)
ENG 314-American Literature, 1914-1945 (UTC)
ENG 332- Southern American Literature (UTC)
ENG 313-American Literature 1865-1914 (UTC)
ENG 113-Western Humanities I (UTC)
ENG 115-Western Humanities II (UTC)
ENG 206- Survey of American Literature (UTC)
ENG 213-Survey of American Literature to 1855 (UTC)
ENG 214-Survey of American Literature since 1855 (UTC)
ENG 2010- Introduction to Literary Analysis (UTC)
ENG 1001-Modes of Inquiry (UF)
AML 2070-Literature from the Civil War to World War I (UF)
AML 2070-The American Renaissance (UF)
AML 2070-American Literature after World War II (UF)
LIT 2120-World Literature since the Neoclassical Age (UF)
AML 2070-Modernism and Modernity (UF)
AML 2410-Issues and Themes in Southern Literature and Culture (UF)
ENG 121/ENC 1101 -Rhetoric and Composition (UF and UTC)
ENGL 102-Introduction to Literature and Literary Theory (S. Carolina)
Anonymous Peer Reviewing
Publication Reviewer for University of Tennessee Press (2012-present)
Publication Reviewer for Western American Literature (2011)
Publication Reviewer for LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory (2011)
Publication Reviewer for e-journal The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s
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Literature (2010)
Publication Reviewer for Broadview Press’s critical edition of Henry James’s
The Bostonians (2006)
Editorial/Scholarly Work
Research/Editorial Assistant: Studies in Scottish Literature, G. Ross Roy, ed. (August
1997-May 1999)
Research/Editorial Assistant: The Queen’s Wake by James Hogg, Patrick Scott, ed.
(August 1997-December 1997)
Research/Editorial Assistant: Male and Female: Issues and Attitudes in Western Culture
by Phillip Rollinson (January 1998-May 1998)
University-Wide Committee Service
UTC Faculty Senate (Fall 2015)
Co-Faculty Advisor, UTC chapter of National Society for Collegiate Scholars (since 2011)
UTC Admissions Committee (2012-15; chair, 2014-15)
UTC Integrated Studies Advisory Council (2014-15)
UTC Faculty Awards Banquet Planning Committee (2014-15)
UTC History Department Rank, Tenure, and Promotion Committee Member (2014)
UTC Sustainability Committee (2012-13)
UTC Graduate Council (Fall 2010)
UTC’s NCAA Self-Study Committee on Student Well Being (2010-11)
UTC Curriculum Committee (2009-2010)
UTC Athletics Committee (2008-09)
UTC Bookstore Committee (2007-08)
UTC Committee on Faculty Evaluations (2006-07, 2010-12)
UTC College Council (2006-08)
UTC Library Committee (2006-07)
Departmental Committees Chaired
UTC English Creative Nonfiction Hiring Committee: Successful hiring of
Kerry Howley (2014)
UTC English Department Cultures and Civilizations Committee (2010-11)
UTC English Department Ad Hoc Committee on Western Humanities (2009-10)
UTC English Department Softball/Sequoya Society Committee (2007-08)
Departmental Committee Membership
UTC English Department Advisory Committee (2012-present)
UTC English Department Graduate Studies Committee (2007-10, 2012-15)
UTC English Department Softball/Sequoya Society Committee (2008-10)
UTC English Department Scholarships Committee (2006-07, 2008-10)
UTC English Department Curriculum Committee (2006-07)
Sally B. Young Essay Competition Judge (2006-09)
North Callahan Essay Competition Judge (2008-09, 14)
Themla Styles Igou Poetry Competition Judge (2007-09)
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Ken Smith Fiction Competition Judge (2009-11)
Search Committee for position in Shakespeare and Renaissance (2010):
Successful hiring of Andrew McCarthy
Search Committee for position in creative writing (2007):
Successful hiring of Thomas Balazs and Sybil Baker
Undergraduate Thesis Committee Participation
Emilee Cutright, DHON Thesis reader (2014-15)
James Corkern, DHON English Department Thesis Reader (2010)
John Dooley, Religion Department Thesis Reader (2007)
Graduate Thesis and Comprehensive Exam Committee Participation
Clayton Powers, Thesis Chair (2015)
Kelsy Holliday, Directed Reading/Comps Chair (2014)
Natalie Cope, Thesis Chair (2013)
Mollee Shannon, Thesis Reader (2013)
Katie McClellan, Thesis Chair (2011)
Shilo Scroggs, Comps Director (2011)
Holly Cowart, Thesis Reader, (2011)
Taryn Humphries, Thesis Reader (2011)
K. Daniel Gleason, Thesis Reader (2011)
Sam Currin, Comps Committee Member (2010)
Jennifer Eble, Comps Committee Member (2010)
Ralph Brandon Buckner, Thesis Reader (2010)
Professional and Community Service
Coordinator for Featured Speaker: Pearl James, “Hollywood’s Great War” (2014)
Conference Co-Organizer, First Biennial John Dos Passos Conference (2014)
Founding Member: John Dos Passos Society (2011)
Take Five Community-Wide Reading Series (2007, 14, 15)
Chapter Secretary: Chattanooga Council of Teachers of English (2009-10)
“How to Publish in Graduate School.” Delivered at the Graduate and Undergraduate
Student Conference in Literature, Rhetoric, and Composition (UTC, 2009)
Co-Organizer: UTC English Graduate Student Orientation (2008-2010)
Board of Directors: Arts and Education Council of Chattanooga (2006-09)
Presentation on teaching Voltaire’s Candide. UTC Western Humanities Workshop (2006)
Program Committee, Conference on Southern Literature (2006-09)
Robert Penn Warren Circle Board of Directors (2002-2005)
Scholarly Honors and Awards
UC Foundation Summer Fellowship (2014)
UTC College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Researcher Award (2013)
UTC Alpha Society Member (inducted 2013)
Department of English Outstanding Tenure-Line Faculty Member (2014)
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UC Foundation Professorship (2009)
Exceptional Merit, UTC Department of English (2006-07, 2008-09, 2012-13, 2013-14)
UTC Faculty Development Grant (2005, 06, 07, 10, 11, 12, 13)
University of Florida College of Liberal Arts Dissertation Fellowship (Spring 2005)
Eleanor Clark Award for best graduate student paper, Robert Penn Warren Circle
Conference: “Have You Seen My Signified?: Original Sin and Metanarrative
Structure in Warren’s Poetry” (2002)
Grinter Fellowship, 2001-2004: University of Florida additional graduate student stipend
University of South Carolina “Hare” Award Given to the M.A. student who
finishes the degree in the shortest amount of time (1999)
Southern Writers/Southern Writing Best-of-Conference Award: “The Unfulfilled
Code: Oversexed and Desexed Cavaliers in John Crowe Ransom’s
‘Necrological’” (1998)
Yemassee Award: Best short story in the 1998 spring issue of Yemassee
University of South Carolina “Niche” Award: For the M.A. student who makes an
academic “niche” in the English department (1998)
Reed-Smith English Department Fellowship, University of South Carolina (1997-1998)
Teaching Honors and Distinctions
Recognized Teacher at UTC Outstanding Senior Awards Day: Recognized by Emily
Ingham (2014), Greg Kubisak (2011), and Madonna Kemp (2007)
Recognized Teacher at UTC Student Alumni Association Open House: Recognized by
Deborah Broomer (2010)
Nominated for UTC’s SGA Outstanding Teacher Award by Madonna Kemp (2007)
University of Florida Graduate Teaching Award, departmental-level winner (one of five
selected from over 100 graduate English instructors), 2003
University of South Carolina Irene Elliott Teaching Award Finalist, 1999 (three chosen
from 25 graduate teaching assistants)
Gamecock Student Mentor: Recognized as outstanding teacher for a student-athlete at the
University of South Carolina, (1998-99)
Professional Development
UTC ThinkAchieve New Student Orientation Lecturer (Summer 2013)
Attended the Foundations of Critical Thinking International Conference. Berkeley, CA.
(July 19-22, 2010)
Attended/Presented: Western Humanities Workshop. University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga (July 2006)
Creative Writing Publications
“Spaces.” Yemassee 6.2 (Spring 1998): 12-21. (short story)
Winner: New Play Sounding Series, Utah Playwright’s Competition. Salt Lake Acting
Company, Salt Lake City, UT. Staged Reading of A Birch in Winter, a play in two
acts. 9 June 1997. Robin Wilkes-Dunn, director.
“Skeletal Sleeping.” Shades: The University of Utah’s Literary and Art Magazine 7
(1994): 12-15. (poetry publication)
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Winner: 1992 Utah Young Playwright’s Competition for Circumstance and the Musician,
sponsored by the Sundance Institute.
Current Professional Affiliations
Modern Language Association
American Literature Association
John Dos Passos Society