Sebastian Williams

Davis & Elkins College, Department of English

sebastianwilliams567@gmail.com | williamss4@dewv.edu

Education

Purdue University | PhD in English (2021)

Wright State University | Master of Arts (2016) and Graduate Certificate of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (2016)

Heidelberg University | Bachelor of Arts (2013)

Appointments

Davis & Elkins College | Assistant Professor (Summer 2021 – Present)

Davis & Elkins College | Instructor (Spring 2021)

Publications

Book

2023 | Modernist Parasites: Bioethics, Dependency, and Literature, post-1900. Posthumanities and Citizenship Futures Series, Lexington/Rowman & Littlefield.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

2023 | “Public Health, Visual Rhetoric, and Latin America: Steinbeck’s The Forgotten Village.” Journal of Medical Humanities, DOI: 10.1007/s10912-023-09796-z.

2021 | “Self-Consumption: Cannibalism and Viral Outbreak in Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE), Advance Access, DOI: 10.1093/isle/isab007.

2021 | “Proximity and Animal Ethics in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘The Last Will and Testament of Silverdene Emblem O’Neill.” Eugene O’Neill Review, vol. 42, no. 1, 2021, pp. 41-53.

2020 | “Woolf’s Bioethics: Animals and Dependency in ‘The Widow and the Parrot.’” Woolf Studies Annual, vol. 26, no. 1, 2020, pp. 105-20.

2020 | “Anthropocentric Ableism and Virginia Woolf’s Flush.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 53, no. 1, 2020, pp. 107-23.

2020 | “Rogue Bodies: Disabled Antiheroes and the Pop-Culture Saga in Vikings” (co-authored with Alex Long). Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 53, no. 1, March 2020, pp. 129-47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12885.

2019 | “The Gothic Grotesque: Disability and Monstrosity in Faulkner’s Sanctuary.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, 2019, pp. 461-76.

2019 | “Silence and Mediation: Narrative Form in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India.” South Asian Review, vol. 40, no 1-2, 2019, pp. 20-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2019.1572285.

2016 | “Contaminated Salts and Volatile Ethers: Jekyll and Hyde and the Pharmacy Act.” Journal of Stevenson Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, Fall 2016, pp. 149-66.

Other Publications

“Virginia Woolf: Critical Summary & Annotated Bibliography.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Series (Gale/Cengage), forthcoming.

2015 | “‘They Speak it Just Like Us, Only Funnier’: Dialect as a Performance of Cultural Difference in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Voices, vol. 2, 2015, pp. 12–15.

Under Review

“Disability and Afro-Modernism: Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille.” Disability Studies Quarterly.

Fellowships and Grants

2023 | Appalachian College Association, I.E.D.O. Grant (approx. $1,000)

2023 | Innovation/Teaching Grant (D&E College) for podcasting equipment (approx. $300)

2020-21 | Excellence in Research (Purdue) – Dissertation Completion Fellowship ($20,000)

2019-20 | Robert Liddell Lowe Graduate Scholarship ($4,000)

2019 | National Humanities Without Walls Fellowship ($5,000)

- funded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

2018 | Purdue Summer Research Fellowship ($3,000)

Editing

Editorial Assistant – Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. 2018 to 2020. Published by Purdue University Press.
Managing Editor – Emily Dickinson Journal. 2015 to 2016. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Refereed Conference Presentations

National/International Conferences

“Karel Čapek’s Ecomodernism: Továrna na absolutno [The Absolute at Large] and Krakatit.” Modernist Studies Association Conference. 26-30 Oct. 2022. Portland, OR.

- “Modernism, Animal Ethics, and Children’s Literature.” Roundtable, 2022 MSA Conference.

“Woolf’s Children’s Literature: Disability and Animal Ethics in ‘The Widow and the Parrot.’” International Virginia Woolf Conference. 4-6 June 2019. Mount St. Joseph University, Cincinnati, OH.

“Intelligible Bodies: Statistics and Social Physics in Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh.” British Women Writers Conference. 25-27 April 2019. Auburn University, Auburn, AL.

“Parasites and Public Health: Nonhuman Actors in Great Depression Literature.” Heidelberg Spring Academy. 18-24 March 2019. Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.

20-person international consortium; approx. 10-percent acceptance rate.

“Gerictsorganismus: Nonhuman Law and Bare Life in Kafka’s Der Prozeß [The Trial].” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900. 21-23 Feb. 2019. Louisville, KY.

“Creaturely Poetics and Radical Ethics: Rethinking Animality in W.B. Yeats’s 1917 Poetry.” International Yeats Society Conference. 20-22 Oct. 2017. New York City, NY.

“‘Tick, tick, tick, went the machine’: Time, Cinema, and Narrative in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts.” Space Between Society Conference. 25-27 May 2017. University of Mississippi, Oxford, MI.

Regional and Graduate Conferences

“Dampfsnaubentier: German Train Poetry and the Politics of Movement at the Fin de siècle.” Early Atlantic Reading Group (EARG). 2-3 April 2018. Purdue University.

“Disability and the Gothic Grotesque in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary.” Purdue Linguistics, Literature, and Second Language Studies Conference. 3-5 March 2018. Purdue University.

“Cybernetic Science Fiction: System and Environment in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods.” Finding Frontiers: Then, Now, and Beyond. 11 March 2017. West Virginia University.

“War, Cameras, and Membranes: Filmic Vision in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day.” Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media. 1-2 April 2016. Northern Illinois University.

“The Murderess: Liminality and the Homo Sacer in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.” Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality Symposium. 28 Feb 2016. Wright State University.

“‘Thousands of people had already gathered’: Mob Violence in German Cinema and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust.” Violent Bodies. 30-31 Oct. 2015. Ohio State University.

“‘Cat got your tongue?’: Performing Dialects as Difference in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Thresholds and Beyond: Exploring Abstract and Concrete Borders, Boundaries, and Frontiers. 28 Mar. 2015. Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Teaching

(for more detailed information, see my Teaching Page)

Recent Courses Taught

These courses were taught as the instructor of record:

Davis & Elkins College

Literature
- ENGL 360 – South Asian Literature and Postcolonialism
- ENGL 220B – British Literature II
- ENGL 202 – Literary Investigations (Intro to English, for Majors)
- ENGL 107 – Introduction to Literature (non-majors)
Rhetoric and Writing Studies
- ENGL 326B – Writing for the Community (Service-Learning)
- COMM 325 – Environmental Communication
- ENGL 324 – Writing in the Genres (Multimodal Writing)
- ENGL/COMM 323 – Rhetorical Theory
- ENGL 204 – Professional and Technical Writing
Introductory Composition
- ENGL 102 – College Writing II: Digital Cultures
- ENGL 101 – College Writing I: Writing About Place
Other
- HONR 220 – Work Culture in America (Honors)
- GES 105 – Graphic Novels and Comics (First-Year Seminar)

Purdue University

ENGL 286 – The Movies: Film and Critical Theory
ENGL 250 – National Narratives and Great American Books
ENGL 106Y – Digital Rhetorics: An Introduction to Composition (ONLINE)
ENGL 106 – Composing through Narratives: Introductory Composition

Teaching Awards

Excellence in Teaching Award, Purdue U (2019)
Quintilian Teaching Award, Purdue U (2019)
Excellence in Teaching Award, Purdue U (2018)
Quintilian Teaching Award, Purdue U (2018)
Quintilian Teaching Award, Purdue U (2017)

Service

(to the profession)

2023 | Peer reviewer for Oxford University Press’s Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE)
2023 | Peer reviewer for Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture
2022-23 | Alumni Board Member, Humanities Without Walls (Andrew Mellon Foundation)
2020-22 | Peer reviewer for The Explicator journal, multiple articles.
2022 | Advisor for the Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism series (Gale/Cengage).

(to the community)

2022 | Judge, West Virginia Young Writers Contest

Davis & Elkins College

2022-present | Coordinator, D&E Writing Symposium and Writing Contest
2021-present | Curriculum Committee Member
2021-present | Secretary, D&E Faculty Assembly
2022 | Ad hoc committee member, First-Year Seminar Curriculum
2021 | Event coordinator, “Recite Women’s Writing” (Women’s History Month event)
2021 | Coordinator, 2021 D&E Writer Series (annual guest writer series)

Purdue University

2020-21 | Vice President, Graduate Student English Association (GradSEA)
2019-20| Co-chair, Symposium Committee, with LITCO (English graduate student organization).
2019| Invited talk, “Life in Grad School.” Purdue University.
2019| Invited talk, “Writing Groups.” Purdue University.
2018-19| Pedagogical Committee: Syllabus-approach leader for Introductory Composition at Purdue.
2018| Abstract reviewer for Purdue Linguistics, Literature, and Second Language Studies Conference.

Language and Proficiencies

German (reading knowledge)

Web design and publishing (HTML, CSS, Javascript) [beginner proficiency]; TWINE

Other: Adobe InDesign, CC, Audacity, Qualtrics, ScholarOne and BePress publishing software

Professional Memberships

Currently a member of the following:

2021 | Modernist Studies Association
2019 | British Women Writers Society
2019 | International Virginia Woolf Society
2017 | International Yeats Society
2017 | Space Between Society
2017 | Society for Disability Studies
2014 | Modern Language Association

Relevant Professional Experience

Reynolds & Reynolds Dayton, OH Sept. 2014 – Dec. 2020

Content Writer/Technical Writer
Writing and editing articles and technical specifications for marketing
Freelance Content/Technical Writer (June 2016 to Dec. 2020)

Purdue OWL West Lafayette, IN Summer 2017 – Fall 2018

Content Editor and Developer
Part-time. Editing and updating content for the Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism Pages. Writing original content on literary studies and pages on writing about literature.

Advertiser-Tribune Tiffin, OH Dec. 2013 – Aug. 2014

Newspaper Correspondent
Reporting on local politics, including city council meetings. Interviewing and research; writing and editing short articles in traditional journalistic format.

German-American Institute Heidelberg, Germany Feb. 2013 – Aug. 2013

Research Assistant
Translating and writing articles and brochures on various learning programs, gap year opportunity, and study-abroad programs. These were geared largely towards high-school students as well as the local university population.