[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_RE9NWZ1ec” title=”Meet%20Our%20Faculty:%20Dr.%20Abram%20Steen%20″]

Interests:

Being an English professor keeps me busy doing what I love, which is reading books, writing about books, and talking about books with other people. I teach many courses (listed below), but my favorites at the moment are Development of the Novel, Jane Austen (4000-level), & 20th Century Postcolonial Literature (4000-level). I’m also at work on a book about Protestants, death, and literature in 17th century England, which is not as dreary as it sounds. A few parts of it have been published as articles (listed below).

I could easily spend all my time on teaching and research, but fortunately I have a wife (Melissa) and two young children, and they’re even more fun and interesting than books. My 5 year old daughter Meike (pronounced “Micah”) really likes the ballet the Nutcracker, and I sometimes get to play a small part in the performances she stages in our living room. My son Marcus (3 yrs old) and I both like nature programs and have fun watching them together, especially ones about whales & dolphins. Before I had kids and a full-time job, I enjoyed listening to music, watching movies, and trying to remain slightly hip. That’s mostly stopped, but here are a few of my favorites:

Music I like:
Bob Dylan, Sufjan Stevens, Warren Zevon, Bruce Cockburn, U2, Bach, Brahms,Arvo Part, & Edgar Meyer

Movies I like:
Chariots of Fire, Jaws, The Mission, The Empire Strikes Back, Tstotsi, Rushmore, Master and Commander, Persuasion (based on the Austen novel), & Bright Star
books & poems I like: Jane Eyre, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Say You’re One of Them (by Uwem Akpan), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn), Bleak House (Dickens), A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry), and All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)

Classes I teach:

• EN1013-23 Literary Heritage I & II
• EN2023 Literary Heritage of the West IV
• EN3133 Renaissance Literature
• EN3303 18th Century Literature
• EN 3413 Romanticism
• EN 3543 Victorian Literature
• EN 3713 Development of the Novel
• EN 3753-63 American Literature I & II
• EN 3893 Literary Criticism
• EN 4413 Jane Austen
• EN 4483 Charles Dickens
• EN 4923 20th Century Postcolonial Literature

Recent Publications:

Journal Articles:
“‘remembrest right’: Remembering the Dead in John Donne’s Songs and Sonets,” Renaissance and Reformation, 33.2 (Spring 2010): 93-124.

“‘over this Jordan’: Dying and the Nonconformist Community in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,” Modern Philology, 110:1 (August 2012): 49-73.