Professor
Divisional Dean of Humanities
Milliman Endowed Chair in the Humanities
Contact Information
CMU 50
Office Hours
By appointment
Biography
A.B., Harvard University, summa cum laude English Literature, 1992
B.A., Oxford University, 1st-class honours in Modern History, 1994
Ph.D., Stanford University, English and American Literature, 2000
Curriculum Vitae
(739.08 KB)
Activities and Interests
Brian Reed is the Milliman Endowed Chair in the Humanities and a specialist in twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry. He is the author of three books--Hart Crane: After His Lights (2006), Phenomenal Reading: Essays on Modern and Contemporary Poetics (2012), and Nobody's Business: Twenty-First Century Avant-Garde Poetics (2013)--and the co-editor of two essay collections, Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow (2003) and Modern American Poetry: Points of Access (2013). He has published more than fifty essays and articles on image-text relations in poetry, on sound in poetry, and on poetry in relation to other arts. He is a past Chair of the Executive Committee of the Poetry and Poetics Forum of the Modern Language Association, and he has served on the Executive Board of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association. From 2014-2018, he was Chair of the Department of English.
Awards
Fulbright Scholar 2009.
Rhodes Scholar 1992.
Research
Selected Research
- Reed, Brian. “Show Me the Color of Your Flowers: American AIDS Poetry Today.” New Centennial Review 21.2 (Fall 2021): 99-126.
- “Palpable Stoppages: Rae Armantrout’s Poetics of Silence.” Foreign Literature Studies [外国文学研究] 43.3 (June 2021): 13-32.
- “The Cantos in a Quarter.” Approaches to Teaching Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Demetres Tryphonopoulos and Ira Nadel. New York: Modern Language Association, 2021. 155-64.
- “Modernisms: Aotearoa New Zealand-Australia-Fiji, 1926-1986.” Co-authored with Erin G. Carlston and Matthew Hayward. Modernist Cultures 15.3 (August 2020): 263-275.
- “Sing Wild: Allen Curnow in 1940.” Journal of New Zealand Literature 38.1 (Winter 2020): 49-67.
- “When Interfaces Interfere: Crashlands, Cancer, and Embodied Gaming.” Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures 3.2 (December 2019): 33-40.
- “Defying Gravity: Tyehimba Jess’s Syncopated Sonnets.” Foreign Literature Studies [外国文学研究] 41.6 (December 2019): 27-42.
- “Now That’s Poetry: Vito Acconci, Conceptual Writing, and Poetic Nominalism.” Inciting Poetics: Thinking and Writing Poetry, ed. Jeanne Heuving and Tyrone Williams. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019. 192-224.
- “Another Dimension: Sweeney Reed’s Visual Poetics.” Antipodes 32.1-2 (2018): 195-208
- “Poet, Tree: Martin Harrison’s ‘Red Gum’.” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 18.2 (2018). Web.
- “’Feels Deeply / Cannot Understand’: John Ashbery, The Tennis Court Oath and Queer Affect.” Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures 2.1 (June 2018): 1-7.
- "Give Them What They Want: Populist Rhetoric in Conceptual Art and Writing.” Postscript: Writing after Conceptual Art, ed. Andrea Andersson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. 152-67.
- “Sherwin Bitsui’s Blank Dictionary: Navajo Poetics and Non-Indigenous Readers.” The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time, ed. Charles Altieri and Nicholas Nace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. 189-99.
- “Visual Poetry and the Poetics of Data Visualization.” Journal of English Language and Literature 63.4 (2017): 659-74.
- "Setting a Poem: A. J. Carruthers’ ‘Music, After Michael Dransfield.’" Foreign Literature Studies [外国文学研究] 39.3 (June 2017): 7-15.
- “Postdigital Global Literary History: On the Fourth Edition of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.” Boundary 2 44.2 (May 2017): 213-39.
- "Idea Eater: The Conceptual Lyric as an Emergent Literary Form." Mosaic 49.2 (June 2016): 1-15.
- “Stanisław Dróżdż: From Conceptual Poem to Concept-Shape.” Jacket2. University of Pennsylvania. 5 February 2016. Web.
- “The Shine and the Shadow: John Tranter Re-Views John Ashbery.” Recovery and Transgression: Memory in American Poetry, ed. Kornelia Freitag. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015. 139-56.
- “Somewhere Bluebirds Fly: Jackson Mac Low Directs a Poetry Reading.” Amodern no. 4 (Spring 2015). Web.
- “To Venture Outward: Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s ‘Korea’.” Arcade, Stanford University, August 2015. Web.
- “On Mary Ellen Solt’s ‘Forsythia.’” Coldfront. 9 November 2015. Web.
- “The New York School.” The Cambridge History of American Poetry, eds. Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 844-68.
- Rev. of Among the Nightmare Fighters: American Poets of World War II by Diederik Oostdijk. William Carlos Williams Review 31.1 (Spring 2014): 88-92.
- “Null Appropriate: On the Untimeliness of the Avant-Garde.” Lana Turner no. 7 (2014): 315-19.
- “Confessional Poetry: Staging the Self.” Modern American Poetry: Points of Access, ed. by Kornelia Freitag and Brian Reed. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013. 99-114.
- “Some Old Dream of Kinship: Christopher Brennan’s Poems (1913) and Modernism’s Place.” Lingua Humanitatis 15.3 (December 2013): 123-39.
- Modern American Poetry: Points of Access, ed. Kornelia Freitag and Brian Reed. Heidelberg: Winter, 2013.
- Nobody's Business: Twenty-First Century Avant-Garde Poetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013.
- “Poetics, Western.” Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th ed., ed. Roland Greene et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. 1058-64.
- “Land’s End and Periscope (Hart Crane).” Jasper Johns: Seeing with the Mind’s Eye. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2012. 94-98.
- “Becoming Marjorie Perloff.” Jacket2. Kelly Writers House, 8 November 2012. Web.
- Phenomenal Reading: Essays on Modern and Contemporary Poetics. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012.
- “Robert Duncan and Gertrude Stein from Writing Writing to Ground Work II.” (Re:)Working the Ground: Essays on the Late Writings of Robert Duncan, ed. James Maynard. New York: Palgrave, 2011. 169-92.
- “Lisa Robertson, Ezra Pound, and Preposterous Classicism.” Open Letter 14.5 (Spring 2011): 42-52.
- “In Other Words: Postmillennial Poetry and Redirected Language.” Contemporary Literature 52.4 (Winter 2011): 756-90.
- “‘Footprints of a Wild Ballet’: The Poem-Paintings of Frank O’Hara and Norman Bluhm.” Frank O’Hara Now: New Essays on the New York Poet, ed. Robert Hampson and Will Montgomery. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010. 211-28.
- “Hand in Hand: Jasper Johns and Hart Crane.” Modernism/modernity 17.1 (January 2010): 21-45.
- “Hard Going: Resisting the Fantasy of Distance’s Irrelevance.” Hyperrhiz no.7 (Spring 2010). Web.
- “Mechanical Form and Twenty-First Century American Poetry.” Co-authored with Ping Guo. Foreign Literature Studies. 32.2 (April 2010): 10-25.
- “Grammar Trouble.” Boundary 2 36.3 (Fall 2009): 133-58.
- “Reginald Shepherd at Hart Crane’s Grave.” Callaloo 32.4 (Fall 2009): 1274-92.
- “Visual Experiment and Oral Performance.” The Poetry of Sound/The Sound of Poetry, ed. Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 270-84.
- “Modernist Ohio: Hart Crane and the Challenge of Akron.” Hiram Poetry Review no. 69 (Spring 2008): 47-62.
- “On the Style and Philosophy of Robert Frost’s ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay.’” Co-authored with Ping Guo. Waiguo Wenxue Yanjiu [Foreign Literature Studies] 30.4 (Fall 2008): 112-19.
- “Tom Raworth Between Two Avant-Gardes: The British Poetry Revival and the New American Poetry.” Another Language: Poetic Experiment in Britain and North America, ed. Kornelia Freitag and Katharina Vester. Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2008. 161-71.
- “The Time Has Come to Talk of Queens: John Ashbery’s ‘Coma Berenices.’” Seattle Review 1.1 (Summer 2007): 159-77.
- “The Dark Room Collective and Post-Soul Poetics.” African American Review 41.4 (Winter 2007): 727-47.
- “‘Lost Already Walking’: Caroline Bergvall’s ‘Via.’” Jacket no.34 (October 2007). Web.
- “Now Not Now: Gertrude Stein Speaks.” English Studies in Canada 33.4 (December 2007): 103-13.
- “Carry on England: Tom Raworth’s ‘West Wind,’ Intuition, and Neo-Avant-Garde Poetics.” Contemporary Literature 47.2 (Summer 2006): 170-206.
- Hart Crane: After His Lights. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006.
- “Twentieth-century Poetry and the New York Art World.” A Concise Companion to Twentieth-century American Poetry, ed. Stephen Fredman. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 113-34.
- "Eden or Ebb of the Sea’: Susan Howe’s Word Squares and Postlinear Poetics.” Postmodern Culture 14.2 (January 2004). Web.
- “Carl Sandburg’s The People, Yes, Thirties Modernism, and the Problem of Bad Political Poetry.” Texas Studies in Language and Literature 46.2 (Summer 2004): 181-212.
- Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow, ed. Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2003.
- “Hart Crane’s Victrola.” Modernism/modernity 7.1 (January 2000): 99-125.
- “Ezra Pound’s Utopia of the Eye: The Chinese Characters in the Rock-Drill Cantos.” Paideuma 26 (Fall-Winter 1997): 111-21.
Research Advised
- DeBlois, Michael Anthony. To Lose Oneself in the Process: Form and Praxis in Contemporary Subject-in-Process Poetry. 2022. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Concannon, Joseph. The Now Criticism: Vernacular Poetry Scholars from 1990-2005. 2021. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Schenold, Terrence E. The Poetics of Reflection in Digital Games. 2019. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Grimmer, Chelsea. Global Fluidity: Coalitional Worldbuilding in the Afterlife of Posthumanism. 2019. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Lin, Hsinmei. The Poetics of Worlding: Nonhuman Cartographers and the Becoming of Histories. 2019. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Malone, Jennifer A. Encounters With the Modernist Food-Object. 2018. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Youell, Ryan. The Architecture of Anti-Utopias: Critiques of Modern Public Housing from London to Orwell. 2018. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Van Houdt, Jennifer. Delenda Est: World and Belief in Apocalyptic Thought. 2018. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Burgund, Nicole. Trying to Say the Whole Thing: Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Ethics of Autobiography. 2017. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Helterbrand, Ryan. Plastic/Explosive: Claude Cahun and the Politics of Becoming Otherwise. 2017. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Babbie, Raymond Tyler. Issues of Modernism: Editorial Authority in Little Magazines of the Avant Guerre. 2017. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Bourbonnais, Alissa. Choreographing Memory: Performance and Embodiment in Multimodal Narrative. 2016. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Wong, Jane. Going toward the Ghost: The Poetics of Haunting in Contemporary Asian American Poetry. 2016. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Laynor, Gregory. The Making of Intermedia: John Cage to Yoko Ono, 1952-1972. 2016. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Lim, Tae Yun. Female Exiles in Language: Reading for New Poetic Subjects in Modern and Contemporary Feminist Experimental Poetry. 2016. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Zygutis, Linda. Critic, Reader, Fan: Modernism and Textual Poaching in H.D., Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein. 2015. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Warrior, Carol E. Baring the Windigo's Teeth: The Fearsome Figure in Native American Narratives. 2015. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Percinkova-Patton, Irena. Toast to Morrison: The Trickster Paradigm in African American Literature. 2013. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Miller, Megan A. Modernism’s History of the Earth. 2012. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Cohen, Sarah. School of Unlikeness: American Poetry and the Creative Writing Workshop. 2012. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Maestas, Nadine A. Calling Out the State: Postmodern American Anthropoetics. 2012. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Joseph Frantz, "Donald Justice and New Formalist Poetry," 2011.
- Fitzgerald, Andrew. Millenial Fiction and the Emergence of Posthuman Cosmopolitanism. 2011. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Welsh, Timothy J. Immersive Fictions: Modern Narrative, New Media, Mixed Reality. 2011. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Golden, Amanda. Annotating Modernism: The Reading and Teaching Strategies of Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, and Anne Sexton. 2009. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
Affiliations
Home Department
Related Departments
Professional Affiliations
Modern Language Association, American Comparative Literature Assocation, Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, Modernist Studies Association, American Association of Australasian Literary Studies
Related News
Related News
- E.J. Koh Featured in UW Magazine (April 7, 2024)
- Recommended Reading Spring 2023 (May 26, 2023)
- English and the Humanities Adapt and Thrive (December 18, 2021)
- In Memoriam: William Henry Matchett 1923-2021 (December 18, 2021)
- Humanities Division launches First Year Experience: Meet Humanities First (May 7, 2020)
- Faculty Notes (May 15, 2019)
- Lee Scheingold Lecture in Poetry and Poetics (November 30, 2018)
- A Note From Our Chair / Brian Reed (June 15, 2018)
- Faculty and Staff Notes (May 30, 2018)
- Brian Reed Named Divisional Dean of the Humanities (May 22, 2018)
- Recommended Reading: Creative Writing Grad Student Edition (May 21, 2018)
- Brian Reed's Katz Lecture available for online viewing (March 7, 2018)
- Chair Times Two (February 14, 2018)
- A Note From Our Chair / Brian Reed (December 14, 2017)
- Faculty and Staff Notes (November 17, 2017)
- Recommended Reading / Faculty Suggest Winter Books (November 16, 2017)
- A Note From the Chair / Brian Reed (June 29, 2017)
- Book Recommendations / English Faculty Suggest Summer Reading (May 28, 2017)
- Book Recommendations / English Faculty Suggest Winter Reading (November 19, 2016)
- Chair's Letter 2016 (June 1, 2016)
- Faculty Notes (August 12, 2015)
- To Grow and Flourish (May 14, 2015)
- Emerging Directions and Continuing Traditions in the English Department (May 6, 2015)
- Ten Takes on Austen's World (May 6, 2015)
- Noted by the Chair (May 5, 2015)
- Faculty Notes (December 13, 2013)