University of Colorado Denver College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bio

Philip Joseph received his BA from Amherst College in 1989 and his PhD from the University of Buffalo in 2000. After teaching for two years in the History and Literature Program at Harvard, Joseph moved to Denver to join the faculty of UCD's English Department. He currently teaches courses in modern American and ethnic American literature. Joseph is also the director and co-founder of the Colorado Center for Public Humanities on our campus. The center is an interdisciplinary unit of UCD, working to enrich public discussions about art, ideas, the historical past, and the diverse cultures of the world through public programming that brings community groups and local high school students to our campus.

Joseph's book, American Literary Regionalism in a Global Age, was published by LSU Press in 2006. His recent scholarly work has appeared in academic journals such as American Literature, English Language Notes, MELUS and Studies in American Fiction. He is currently at work on a book that focuses on cultural representations of "n"ew wars, or low-intensity conflicts, in various places around the globe. The first chapter of this book examines the acclaimed HBO series The Wire, which takes as its primary subject the war on drugs in Baltimore, Maryland.

Select Publications

Books:
American Literary Regionalism in a Global Age. Published in January 2007 from LSU Press.

Articles:

“Literary Lawlessness: Sozaboy and the Case of the Child Soldier in Fiction.”  English Language Notes 49.2 (Fall/Winter 2011): 89-100.

“Soldiers in Baltimore: The Wire and the New Global Wars.” The New. Centennial Review 13.1. Special Issue on War and Peace. ​

"The Verdict from the Porch: Zora Neale Hurston and Reparative Justice," American Literature 74.3 (September 2002): 455-483.

"Dead Letters and Circulating Texts: On the Limits of Literary Archiving," English Language Notes 45.1 (Spring/Summer 2007): 5-20.

"Literary Migration: Abraham Cahan's The Imported Bridegroom and the Alternative of American Fiction," MELUS 27.4 (Winter 2002): 3-32.

"Landed and Literary: Hamlin Garland, Sarah Orne Jewett and the Production of Regional Literatures," Studies in American Fiction 26.2 (Autumn 1998): 147-70.​

Courses Taught

ENGL 2450: Intro to Literary Studies
ENGL 3330: Literature of the American City
ENGL 3750: American Literature, Civil War to Contemporary
ENGL 3795: Race and Ethnicity in American Literature
ENGL 4000/5000: Willa Cather and American Modernism
ENGL 4220/5220: African American Literature
ENGL 4236/5236: American Short Story
ENGL 4770/5770: The Harlem Renaissance
ENGL 5655: American Literary Studies: Civil War to the Cold War
ENGL 6013-3: Race and Ethnicity in 20th-Century American Lit