Tyler Hoffman, Ph.D.
Rutgers University
Armitage Hall, Room 394
311 N. Fifth Street
Camden, NJ 08102-1405
work phone: (856) 225-6515
email: thoffman@camden.rutgers.edu
ADMINISTRATIVE POSITIONS HELD
Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University-Camden, 2008-present.
Responsibilities include: Administering the part-time lecturer budget (approx. 2 million dollars) and dealing with all personnel issues related to part-time lecturers; monitoring course enrollments and ensuring that resources are used efficiently; allocating and managing space within arts and sciences; overseeing seven arts and sciences research centers and institutes; processing all promotion and tenure packets; serving as principal liaison with seventeen department chairs and thirteen undergraduate program directors; advising undergraduate students regarding national fellowships and scholarships for postgraduate study; handling student complaints beyond the departmental level; and assisting the Dean in developing new campus-wide projects; fundraising.
Interim Director, Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, Rutgers University-Camden, 2009-present.
Responsibilities include: Leading efforts to shape the vision of the Center; overseeing six staff members, planning, and operations; assistance in fundraising and linking the Center’s programs to the academic mission of the Department of Fine Arts and the College of Arts and Sciences; fundraising.
President, Rutgers University-Camden Faculty Senate (elected by full-time Arts and Sciences Faculty; advisory body to the Dean), 2003-04.
Responsibilities included: Determining meeting agendas and identifying issues requiring immediate action; calling and conducting meetings of the Senate; establishing annual schedule of committees to report to the Senate; communicating to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences the recommendations of the Senate.
Associate Director, Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities, Rutgers University-Camden, 2002-present.
Responsibilities include: Working with the Director to program events on campus and in the larger mid-Atlantic region to advance understanding and appreciation of regional identity, with particular emphasis on connecting Walt Whitman, an icon of civic engagement and renewal, to work in the public humanities; organizing and teaching summer teacher training workshops for New Jersey high school teachers in the humanities.
Director, Graduate Program in English, Rutgers University-Camden, 2002-08.
Responsibilities included: Overseeing all aspects of recruitment, admission, advising, and retention of students for the second largest graduate program on campus (80-90 students); managing annual budget; developing curricula; programming lecture series.
Founding Co-Director, Walt Whitman Program in American Studies, Rutgers University-Camden, 1998-present.
Responsibilities included: Organizing and maintaining interdisciplinary faculty advisory board; developing curricula; advising students; programming lecture series.
RESEARCH & TEACHING
Professor of English, Rutgers University-Camden, 2011-present
Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University-Camden, 2002-2011.
Assistant Professor of English, Rutgers University-Camden, 1996-2002.
Instructor, University of Alabama, 1994-1996.
Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Virginia, 1991-94.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in English, University of Virginia, 1995.
M.A. in English, University of Virginia, 1990.
B.A. in English, Dartmouth College, 1988.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Harvard Institutes of Higher Education, Management Development Program, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 2010.
Council for Advancement and Support of Education, Development for Deans, Nashville, Tennessee, February 2009.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Robert Frost and the Politics of Poetry. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001. paper 2001.
- Reviewed in New England Quarterly, Robert Frost Review, South Atlantic Review, Times Literary Supplement, Virginia Quarterly Review.
- Winner of the national South Atlantic Modern Language Association Studies Book Award for the best scholarly book published in English in 2001.
Teaching with The Norton Anthology of Poetry: A Guide for Instructors. New York: Norton, 2005.
- Designed primarily as a syllabus-creation tool, the nearly 200-page Guide is for teachers using the Norton Anthology of Poetry who want to convey how poems speak to each other across time, place, and tradition.
American Poetry in Performance: From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011.
Book in Progress
Performing American Modernism: Poetry and the Public Sphere.
Refereed Journal Articles
“Walt Whitman ‘Live’: Performing the Public Sphere,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, forthcoming, Spring 2011.
“Wallace Stevens and the Spoken Word,” Wallace Stevens Journal 33.1, Spring 2009, pp. 97-110.
“Auditing Walt Whitman,” Mickle Street Review 19/20. 2008. 15 pp.
“Frost’s 1930s Road Trips,” Robert Frost Review, Fall 2006, pp. 31-42.
“Art and Heart: Horace Traubel and the Cartoons of Homer Davenport,” Mickle Street Review 16. 2004. 4 pp.
“Robert Frost’s ‘The Vanishing Red’ and the Myth of Demise,” Robert Frost Review, Fall 2003, pp. 101-104.
“Treacherous Laughter: The Poetry Slam, Slam Poetry, and the Politics of Resistance,” Studies in
American Humor, Vol. 3, No. 8, 2001, pp. 49-64.
“‘Time Out’: Frost, the Year 2000, and the Apocalyptic Imagination,” Robert Frost Review, Fall 2000, pp. 1-6.
“Representing AIDS: Thom Gunn and the Modalities of Verse,” South Atlantic Review, Vol. 65, No. 2, Spring 2000, pp. 1-27.
“Robert Frost and the Politics of Labor,” Modern Language Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2, Fall 1999, pp. 109-135.
“Robert Frost’s ‘Sound of Sense’ and the Ideologies of Imagism,” The Journal of Imagism, Vol. 3, Fall 1998, pp. 62-106.
“Emily Dickinson and the Limit of War,” The Emily Dickinson Journal, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1994, pp. 1-18.
Chapters in Books
“Robert Frost and the Public Performance of Poetry,” in Robert Frost in Context, Mark Richardson, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
“Political Poets and Naturalism,” in Cambridge History of American Poetry, Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
“Emily Dickinson,” in American Literary Scholarship 2009: An Annual, Gary Scharnhorst, ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming.)
“Robert Frost and the Politics of Labor,” in Critical Insights: Robert Frost, Morris Dickstein, ed. (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2010), pp. 110-42.
“Lascelles Abercrombie,” in British Writers, vol. 16, Jay Parini, ed. (New York: Scribner’s, 2010), pp. 1-14.
“Representing AIDS: Thom Gunn and the Modalities of Verse,” in Multiformalisms: Postmodern Poetics of Form, Susan Schultz and Annie Finch, eds. (Word Press, 2008), pp. 326-60.
“Reenacting American Civil War Poetry,” in Teaching Nineteenth-Century American Poetry (MLA Options for Teaching Series), Paula Bernat Bennett, Karen L. Kilcup, and Philipp Schweighauser, eds. (MLA, 2007), pp.67-81.
“Walt Whitman: Language” in A Companion to Whitman (Blackwell’s Literature and Culture Series), Donald D. Kummings, ed. (Blackwell, 2006), pp. 361-76.
“John Brown and Children’s Literature” in The Afterlife of John Brown, Eldrid Harrington and Andrew Taylor, eds. (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), pp. 187-202.
“Robert Frost: The Sense of Sound and the Silent Text,” in Robert Frost (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views), Harold Bloom, ed. (Chelsea House, 2003), pp. 271-93.
“Gary Snyder,” in American Writers, vol. 5, Jay Parini, ed. (New York: Scribner’s, 2001), pp. 289-307.
Articles in Encyclopedias
For the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 4th ed., Roland Greene and Stephen Cushman, eds. Princeton University Press, forthcoming): “Performance Poetry”; “Poetry Slam.”
For the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry (Greenwood, 2005): “Robert Frost” (5,000 words); “Thom Gunn” (2,500 words).
For the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature (Oxford University Press, 2004): “Robert Frost” (10,000 words); “Elizabeth Bishop” (7,500 words).
For the Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001): “Vachel Lindsay” (2,000 words); “Vachel Lindsay’s ‘The Congo’” (1,000 words); “Thom Gunn” (2,000 words).
For the Robert Frost Encyclopedia (Greenwood, 2000): “Dartmouth College, RF and” (350 words); “Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (1995)” (500 words); “A Further Range (1936)” (1,000 words); “New Hampshire (1923)” (1,000 words); “Poetic Theories of RF”(2,000 words).
Book Reviews
Rev. of “The Vault at Pfaff’s: An Archive of Art and Literature by New York City’s Nineteenth-Century Bohemians,” ed. by Ed Whitley. NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship), forthcoming.
Rev. of The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost, ed. By Robert Faggen. Robert Frost Review, Fall 2002, pp. 92-96.
Rev. of Robert Frost: The People, Places, and Stories behind His New England Poetry, by Lea Newman. Robert Frost Review, Fall 2001, 97-99.
Rev. of The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War, by Roy Morris, Jr. Mickle Street Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer 2001. 3 pp.
Rev. of Robert Frost and Feminine Literary Tradition, by Karen L. Kilcup. South Atlantic
Review, Vol. 65, No. 4, Fall 2000, 200-203.
Rev. of Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word, ed. by Charles Bernstein. South
Atlantic Review, Vol. 65, No. 1, Winter 2000, 182-85.
Rev. of The Ordeal of Robert Frost, by Mark Richardson. South Atlantic Review, Vol. 63, No. 4, Fall 1998, pp. 97-100.
Rev. of The Politics of Distinction: Walt Whitman and Nineteenth-Century Discourse, by Christopher Beach. South Atlantic Review, Vol. 62, No. 3, Summer 1997, pp. 111-13.
Rev. of Breaking Bounds: Whitman and American Cultural Studies , ed. by Betsy Erkkila and Jay Grossman. South Atlantic Review, Vol. 61, No. 4, Fall 1996, pp. 137-41.
Rev. of Ezra Pound, Popular Genres, and the Discourse of Culture , by Michael Coyle. South Atlantic Review, Vol. 61, No. 2, Spring 1996, pp. 154-57.
Rev. of Frost and the Book of Nature, by George F. Bagby. South Atlantic Review, Vol. 60, No. 2, May 1995, pp. 187-89.
Editorial
Advisory Editor (invited), New Jersey English Journal (publication of New Jersey Council of Teachers of English), 2005.
Advisory Editor (invited), Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature (Oxford University Press), 2004.
Associate Editor, Robert Frost Review, 2000-present.
Editor, Mickle Street Review: An Electronic Journal of Whitman and American Studies, 2000-present.
Guest Co-Editor (invited), Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 16, nos. 3/4 (Winter 1999/Spring 1999) and 17, nos. 1/2 (Summer 1999/Fall 1999).
PAPERS DELIVERED
“Robert Frost and the Public Performance of Poetry,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, January 2011.
“Robert Frost and the Spoken Word,” American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2010.
“Looking for Whitman: A Cross-Campus Experiment in Digital Pedagogy,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2009.
“Robert Frost and His Poetry,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2009.
“Textual Frost,” Special Session Organizer and Chair, American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2006.
“Frost’s Children’s Texts,” American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2006.
“Robert Frost’s Thirties Road Trips,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2005.
“Historical Frost,” Session Organizer and Chair, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2005.
“Robert Frost and the Book Trade,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2004.
“Patchwork Muse: Lorna Goodison’s Caribbean Measures,” International Caribbean Literature Annual Conference, November 2003.
“Robert Frost: The Poet as Ethnographer,” American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2002.
“Robert Frost and the Poetics of Regionalism,” Special Session Organizer and Chair, American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2001.
“Treacherous Laughter: The Politics of the Spoken Word,” Popular Culture Association Annual Conference, April 2001.
“Vachel Lindsay’s ‘Higher Vaudeville’ and American Commercial Culture,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, April 2000.
“Vachel Lindsay and the Performance of Poetry,” Mid-Atlantic Regional American Culture/Popular Culture Association Annual Conference, November 1999.
“Poetry and Intelligibility: Robert Frost as Public Poet,” Robert Frost Conference, Middlebury College, September 1999.
“‘Time Out’: Frost, the Year 2000, and the Apocalyptic Imagination,” American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 1999.
“Teaching Whitman at a Charter School in Camden, New Jersey,” with Valencia Jackson and Susan Muaddi, The Many Cultures of Walt Whitman: A Conference for Teachers and Scholars, Rutgers University-Camden, October 1998.
“Robert Frost and the Politics of Labor,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, April 1998.
“The Politics of Genre in Modernist American Poetry,” Special Session Organizer and Chair, Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, April 1998.
“Form and Politics in Modernist American Poetry,” Special Session Organizer and Chair, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 1997.
“Constructing a ‘Second Culture’: The Poetry Slam and Bakhtinian Carnival,” Poetry and the Public Sphere: A Conference on Contemporary Poetry, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, April 1997.
“Walt Whitman and the Poetics of Performance,” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Annual Conference, March 1997.
“Theories and Genealogies of the Poetry Slam,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 1996.
“‘Clear Your Throat and Speak Up’: Beat Poetics and a Hermeneutics of Performance,” National Poetry Foundation Conference, University of Maine-Orono, June 1996.
“Representing AIDS: Thom Gunn and the Ideologies of Poetic Form,” Exploring Form and Narrative: A Conference of Scholars and Writers on New Trends in American Poetry, West Chester University, May 1995.
“The Politics of Poetic Form: Nationalist Ideology and Robert Frost’s ‘Sound of Sense,’” American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 1995.
“A New Historicist Reading of Robert Frost: American Industrialism and the Myth of the ‘Lone Striker,’” Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film, January 1995.
“Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and the Politics of Textual Production,” Literature/Film Association Conference, December 1993.
“Robert Frost’s ‘Sound of Sense’ and the Rhetoric of Early Modernism,” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Convention, November 1993.
Invited Speaker
“Multiformalisms: Postmodern Poetics of Form,” New York, NY, March 2010. Sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, CUNY-Graduate Center.
“Walt Whitman and the Orality of Poetry,” Tulipwood, Somerset, NJ, June 2008. Sponsored by the Meadows Foundation.
“Robert Frost and the Poetics of Modernism,” Robert Frost Stone House Museum, Shaftsbury, VT, June 2006. Sponsored by the Friends of Robert Frost.
“New Directions in Frost Studies,” Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, July 2003. Keynote. Sponsored by the Fannie and Alan Leslie Center for the Humanities.
CONFERENCE ORGANIZER
Co-Director, with Christopher Sten (George Washington University) and Joe Fruscione (Georgetown University), Melville and Whitman Conference, Washington, DC, forthcoming.
Co-Director, with Geoffrey Sill and Carol Singley, “Walt Whitman and Place: A Conference Celebrating 150 Years of Leaves of Grass,” Rutgers University-Camden, April 2005.
Co-Director, with Geoffrey Sill and Carol Singley, “The Many Cultures of Walt Whitman: A Conference for Teachers and Scholars,” Rutgers University-Camden, November 1998.
GRANTS
P.I., Rutgers University Research Council Grant, 2010-11. Book subvention. $2,000.
Lead Faculty Member, Academic Excellence Fund Grant, Rutgers Camden Community-Based Learning Collaborative, 2010-11. Campus-wide civic engagement initiative. $45,000.
Lead Faculty Member, NEH Digital Humanities Grant, 2009, 2010. “Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman / A Multi-Campus Experiment in Digital Pedagogy.” $24,912; $33,235.
P.I., Rutgers University Academic Excellence Fund, 2007. MFA in Creative Writing program start-up funding. $50,000.
P.I., Rutgers University Research Council Grant, 2000-01. Book permissions. $750.
P.I., Rutgers University Research Council Grant, 1997-98. Research and travel. $500.
P.I., Rutgers University Dialogues Curriculum Grant, 1997. Walt Whitman Program in American Studies start-up funding. $5,975.
ACADEMIC HONORS AND AWARDS
Rutgers-Camden Provost’s Teaching Excellence Award, 2004.
South Atlantic Modern Language Association Studies Book Award, 2002.
Rutgers University Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence, 2002.
EDITORIAL AND OTHER BOARDS
Member, Advisory Board, Story Quarterly magazine, 2009-present.
President, Robert Frost Society, 2005-06.
Executive Committee Member, Robert Frost Society, 2002-2005.
Board Member, Walt Whitman Association, 1997-present.
MANUSCRIPT REVIEWER AND CONSULTANT
Evaluator, National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarly Editions Program, 2003.
Reviewer, Modern Language Studies, 2003; PMLA, 2003, 2006, 2007; Literature Compass, 2006; Oxford University Press, 2009; University of Michigan Press, 2010.
COMMITTEE ACTIVITIES
Chair, Registrar Search Committee, current.
Chair, Center for Urban Research Director Search Committee, current.
Co-Chair, Arts and Sciences 2012 Task Force, current.
Member, Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts Director Search Committee, current.
Member, Scheduling Task Force, 2009-10.
Co-Chair, Subcommittee on Transfer Students, Permanent Working Group on Recruitment and
Retention, 2009-10.
Member Subcommittee on International Students, Permanent Working Group on Recruitment
and Retention, 2009-10.
Member, Subcommittee on Strategic Planning, Permanent Working Group on Recruitment and
Retention, 2009-10.
Vice Chair, Ad Hoc Working Group on Excellence in Undergraduate Education, 2009-10.
Member, Grant Review Committee, Undergraduate Service Learning, 2009.
Chair, Co-op Working Group, 2009.
Chair, Urban Studies Task Force, 2009.
Member, Retention Implementation Task Force, 2009.
Member, Academic Integrity Committee, 2008-.
Chair, Ad Hoc Committee on ESL, 2008-09.
Co-Chair, FAS Transfer Advisory Group, 2008-09.
Chair, Assistant Dean for Academic Advising Search Committee, 2008.
Member, Registrar Search Committee, 2008.
Member, Appointments and Promotions Committee (appointed), 2003-04; (elected) 2004-07.
Member, Admissions and Retention Committee, 2000-03.
COMMUNITY SERVICE
Instructor, Rutgers Early College Humanities Program (Camden high school students), 2008, 2009, 2010.
Instructor, Clemente Course in the Humanities (Camden adult learners), 2008, 2009, 2010.
Coordinator and Instructor, Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (NEH-sponsored) high school teacher training workshops, 2003-06.
Judge, Walt Whitman Association High School Poetry Contest, 1999-present.
Instructor, LEAP Academy (Camden, New Jersey, primary charter school), 1998.