Gordon Ball Visiting Associate Professor of English

Payne Hall 309
ballg@wlu.edu

Education

A. B., Davidson College

M. A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ph. D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Research

Poetry, Literature of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, History and Theory of Film, Twentieth Century History and Culture, Photography

Teaching

English 204: Topics in Creative Writing: Poetry

English 206: Topics in Creative Writing: Nonfiction

English 293: Topics in American Literature (Literature of the Beat Generation)

Selected Publications

BOOKS:   

On Tokyo’s Edge: Gaijin Tales from Postwar Japan. Santa Fe: Red Mountain Press, 2017 (short stories). 

East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg.  Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011.

­­­­Dark Music.  Longmont, Colorado: Cityful Press, 2006. (poetry/memoir)

'66 Frames: A Memoir.  Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, l999.

Journals Mid-Fifties (l954-l958) by Allen Ginsberg. New York: Harper Collins, l995.  (Edited, with introduction and notes.)

Journals Early Fifties Early Sixties by Allen Ginsberg.  New York: Grove Press, l977; l992.  (Edited, with introduction and notes.)  Translations: French and German.

Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness by Allen Ginsberg.  New York: McGraw-Hill, l974.  (Edited, with introduction and notes.)  Translation: Japanese.

SELECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS:

“Things Unrevealed.”  Liberation in Progress. Graz, Austria: Leykam Verlag, forthcoming 2017.

“A Nobel for Dylan?” The Poetics of American Song Lyrics.  Ed. Charlotte Pence. Jackson: UP Mississippi, 2012. 

“Wopbopgooglemop: Howl and its Influences.” The Poem that Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later. Ed. Jason Shinder. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006.  92-99.

“Negative Multiplicities” [review of Christopher Felver’s Beat].  American Book Review.  November-December 2007: 15.                

“Remembering Shig Murao."  San Francisco Chronicle.  October 27, l999.

"A One-Man Generation."  The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats.  Ed. Holly George Warren.  New York: Hyperion, l999. 241-246.  (Published as chapbook, White Fields Press, August l994).

"Saying Goodbye to Allen."  The Chronicle of Higher Education.  October 24, l997.  B76.

"Introduction to `The Beats: Talking Continuously.'" San Jose Studies 19.3 (l993): 23-28.

"Allen Ginsberg and Charles Reznikoff,"  Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference: New Trends in American Studies.  Ed. Marta Gibinska and Zygmunt Mazur.  Kraków: Jagiellonian University, l992.  261-275.

"Jack Kerouac," Dictionary of American Biography, published under the Auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies.  New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, l988.

Review of The Rhetoric of American Romance: Dialectic and Identity in Emerson, Dickinson, Poe, and Hawthorne, by Evan Carton.  South Atlantic Review 52.l  (l987): l33-l37.

My America, My South," Sophia: Studies in Western Civilization and the Cultural Interaction of East and West 33 (l984): 56-57.

"Doors in Leaves of Grass."  Calamus 26 (l984): 2l-24.

"Corso's Triumphant Surrender."  Review of Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit, by Gregory Corso.  American Book Review 5.5 (l983): l8.

"Allen Ginsberg and the Progress of Poetry," English Literature and Language.  Tokyo: Sophia University, l983.  43-54.

"Kerplunk!  Beat Generation Meets Japan."  Japan Times 5 June l983: l4.

"Jonas Mekas and the Experimental Film in America."  An Introduction to Film Criticism.  Ed. Jeffrey H. Richards.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, l977.  l38-l56.

SELECTED CREATIVE PUBLICATIONS

Blue Lyra Review, Shenandoah, New Orphic Review, Southern Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, Buffalo Stamps, and The Sun.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Anthem (family and historical chronicle)

Selected Awards

SELECTED SCHOLARLY AWARDS

Fulbright Specialist Lectureship in American Literature, Sophia, Rikkyo, and Waseda universities, Tokyo, Japan, l983-l984           

American Literature and Culture Specialist, English Seminar, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, summers l986 & l988              

Matthew Fontaine Maury Research Award for Excellence in Stimulating, Encouraging, and Conducting Research at Virginia Military Institute, l992

SELECTED CREATIVE WRITING AWARDS

Vereen Bell Prize for Creative Writing, Davidson College, l963 (Judge: Reynolds Price)

Pulitzer Prize Nomination, Allen Verbatim, l974

John P. Kurlas Memorial Poet-in-residence, Fitton Center for Creative Arts, Hamilton, Ohio, November 2003

James Turner Butler Creative Lectureship, Stetson University, Deland, Florida, March 2011

First Prize, San Antonio Writers’ Guild Award for Flash Fiction, November 2013

SELECTED FILMMAKING AWARDS

North Carolina Film Festival, FilmSouth, Sinking Creek Film Celebration, Big Muddy Film Festival, Atlanta Film and Video Festival

Selected Film and Photography Exhibitions and Publications

SELECTED FILM SHOWINGS

Museum of Modern Art; Guggenheim Museum; Hirshhorn Museum  and Sculpture Garden; Third International Avant-Garde Film Festival, London; San Francisco Cinematheque; Image Forum and Studio 200; College of William and Mary; Ann Arbor Film Festival; Virginia Festival of American Film

SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLICATIONS

Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art; Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University; City Lights Bookstore; Muscarelle Museum, College of William and Mary; Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Centre Pompidou Metz, France; WMRA studio, Harrisonburg, Virginia; Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University.

Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America; How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America; Burroughs: Eine Bild Biographie; DoubleTake; Chronicle of Higher Education; College Literature; New York Times Sunday magazine.