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JOSEPH DARDA
Associate Professor of Literature | Texas Christian University
TCU Box 297270 | Fort Worth, TX 76129 | 817-257-4148 | j.darda@tcu.edu
EDUCATION
PhD, English, University of Connecticut, 2015
MA, English, University of Connecticut, 2012
BA, magna cum laude, English (with distinction), Psychology, University of Washington, 2009
PROFESSIONAL HISTORY
Associate Professor of Literature, Texas Christian University, 2020–
Humanities Institute Fellow, University of Connecticut, 2022–23
Assistant Professor of Literature, Texas Christian University, 2015–20
Mellon Sawyer Seminar Fellow, University of California, Irvine, 2016–17
PUBLICATIONS
Books
The Strange Career of Racial Liberalism. Post•45. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022.
How White Men Won the Culture Wars: A History of Veteran America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021.
Empire of Defense: Race and the Cultural Politics of Permanent War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“The Mismeasure of Sport: Race and the Science of Athletic Performance.” Forthcoming in differences 35, no. 1 (2024).
“Roberto Clemente on the Black/Brown Color Line.” Forthcoming in the Journal of American Studies 57, no. 3 (2023).
“The Great American Baseball Novel: How Literature Invented the National Pastime.” American Literary History 34, no. 4 (2022): 1335–57.
“Antiracism as War.” Representations, no. 156 (2021): 85–114.
“The Race Novel: An Education.” MELUS 45, no. 3 (2020): 1–24.
“The Thin White Line: Veterans and the White Racial Politics of Creative Writing.” American Literature 91, no. 4 (2019): 783–810.
“Like a Refugee: Veterans, Vietnam, and the Making of a False Equivalence.” American Quarterly 71, no. 1 (2019): 83–104. Constance M. Rourke Prize finalist (best article in American Quarterly).
“Military Whiteness.” Critical Inquiry 45, no. 1 (2018): 76–96.
“Dispatches from the Drug Wars: Ishmael Reed, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and the Viet Cong of America.” Modern Fiction Studies 64, no. 1 (2018): 79–103.
“Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome Narrative: Human Rights, the Nayirah Testimony, and the Gulf War.” American Quarterly 69, no. 1 (2017): 71–92.
“The Ethnicization of Veteran America: Larry Heinemann, Toni Morrison, and Military Whiteness after Vietnam.” Contemporary Literature 57, no. 3 (2016): 410–40.
“The Exceptionalist Optics of 9/11 Photography.” Journal of American Studies 50, no. 1 (2016): 185–204.
“The Literary Afterlife of the Korean War.” American Literature 87, no. 1 (2015): 79–105.
“Airport Memory: Recalling Vietnam from the Terminal in Andrew Pham’s Travel Writing.” Criticism 57, no. 2 (2015): 191–210.
“Universality at War: Race, Nation, and Communism in Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go.” African American Review 48, no. 1–2 (2015): 157–73.
“The Visual Apologetics of Philip Roth’s Pastoral America.” Philip Roth Studies 11, no. 2 (2015): 77–94.
“MLK at the LA Riots: Civil Rights, Memory, and Neoliberalism in Charles Johnson’s Dreamer.” Twentieth-Century Literature 60, no. 2 (2014): 197–221.
“Precarious World: Rethinking Global Fiction in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.” Mosaic 47, no. 3 (2014): 107–22.
“The Sacrificial Enterprise: Negotiating Mutilation in W. D. Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes.” American Literary Realism 46, no. 3 (2014): 210–29.
“Graphic Ethics: Theorizing the Face in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” College Literature 40, no. 2 (2013): 31–51.
Book Chapter
“The Whiteness of Blue Lives: Race in American Policing.” In A Field Guide to White Supremacy, edited by Kathleen Belew and Ramón A. Gutiérrez, 304–11. Berkeley: University of California Press in 2021.
Special Issues
Editor with Amira Rose Davis. “The Body Issue: Sports and the Politics of Embodiment.” Special issue, forthcoming in American Quarterly 75, no. 3 (2023).
Editor with Donald E. Pease. “Literary Counterhistories of US Exceptionalism.” Special issue, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 25, no. 2 (2014).
Book Reviews
Review of Contemporary Drift: Genre, Historicism, and the Problem of the Present, by Theodore Martin. Modern Fiction Studies 65, no. 2 (2019): 355–58.
Review of The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen: From Sokol’niki Park to Chicago’s South Side, by Kate A. Baldwin; and Reading America: Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature, by Kristin L. Matthews. American Literature 90, no. 3 (2018): 664–66.
Review of Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the U.S. Racial Imagination in Brown and White, by Lee Bebout; and Playing in the White: Black Writers, White Subjects, by Stephanie Li. Critical Inquiry 44, no. 4 (2018): 791–93.
Review of Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American Literature, by Josephine Nock-Hee Park. MELUS 42, no. 2 (2017): 203–5.
Review of Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature, by Rebecca L. Walkowitz. Modern Fiction Studies 63, no. 1 (2017): 169–71.
Review of Distant Wars Visible: The Ambivalence of Witnessing, by Wendy Kozol. Critical Inquiry 42, no. 3 (2016): 714–16.
Review of Humanitarian Violence: The U.S. Deployment of Diversity, by Neda Atanasoski. MELUS 40, no. 3 (2015): 205–7.
“The Global Remaking of the American Political Novel.” Review of Toward the Geopolitical Novel: U.S. Fiction in the Twenty-First Century, by Caren Irr. Contemporary Literature 55, no. 2 (2014): 430–37.
Review of No Accident, Comrade: Chance and Design in Cold War American Narratives, by Steven Belletto. Modern Fiction Studies 60, no. 2 (2014): 390–93.
“Narratives of Exception in the Warfare State.” Introduction to “Literary Counterhistories of US Exceptionalism,” edited by Joseph Darda, 80–87. Special issue, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 25, no. 2 (2014).
“Old Left, New Class: Literary Anxiety in the Consumers’ Republic.” Review of Fantasies of the New Class: Ideologies of Professionalism in Post–World War II American Fiction, by Stephen Schryer; Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party, by Michael Szalay; and American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War, by Alan M. Wald. Minnesota Review, no. 82 (2014): 151–60.
“When Is Postwar?” Review of War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences, by Mary L. Dudziak; Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government, by James T. Sparrow; and How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America, by Jon Wiener. American Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2013): 639–48.
Review of Constructing the Enemy: Empathy/Antipathy in U.S. Literature and Law, by Rajini Srikanth. MELUS 38, no. 3 (2013): 175–76.
Public Writing
“Dunk Days: On Theresa Runstedtler’s Black Ball.” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 19, 2023.
“The Racial Politics of National Defense.” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 15, 2019.
“The Philosophy of Creative Writing.” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 25, 2019.
“The Thin White Line.” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 19, 2018.
“The Surprising Roots of Recent White Extremism.” Los Angeles Review of Books, April 9, 2018.
“Post-Traumatic Whiteness: How Vietnam Veterans Became the Basis for a New White Identity Politics.” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 21, 2017.
“A New New Man: Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark Turns Twenty-Five.” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 17, 2017.
“How America Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Drone.” Austin American-Statesman, August 2, 2017.
“Trump Taps a Long U.S. Cultural History of Pitting Immigrants against Veterans.” Dallas Morning News, July 10, 2017.
PRESENTATIONS
Invited Talks
“Civil Rights without Human Rights.” Rose Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change, University of Alabama, March 2023.
“Saturday Night Lights: The Integration of College Football and the End of the Full Ride.” AddRan Distinguished Faculty Lecture, Texas Christian University, March 2023.
“Owning Le’Veon Bell and Other White Fantasies.” University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, November 2022.
“Racial Politics and Veteran America: A Conversation with Joseph Darda.” War Studies Collaborative, Fordham University, April 2022.
“The Whiteness of Blue Lives: Race in American Policing.” Conversations on Race and Policing, California State University, San Bernardino, November 2021.
“Antiracism as Education: How Americans Learned to Read for Racial Change.” Elon University, September 2021.
“Is There An Antiwar Literature?” Bastian Lecture, Centre College, September 2020.
“Like a Refugee: Veterans, Vietnam, and the Making of a False Equivalence.” Critical Voices Series, University of California, Irvine, June 2017.
“Defense in the Fifth Domain.” Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality, University of California, Irvine, March 2017.
“Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome with Human Rights.” University of Connecticut, April 2016.
Conferences
“Athlete Economies: Business Literature, Financialization, and the Birth of Sports Management.” American Literature Association, Boston, May 2023.
“Antiracist Reading at the End of Liberal Time.” Modern Language Association, San Francisco, January 2023.
“The Dumb Jock.” Modern Language Association, San Francisco, January 2023.
“The Jock Caucus: The White Ex-Athlete Goes to Washington.” American Studies Association, New Orleans, November 2023.
“The Racial Invention of the Student-Athlete.” Postwar Faculty Colloquium, Denton, TX, April 2022.
“How White Liberals Learned to Read.” Modern Language Association, Washington, DC, January 2022.
“A Connecticut Yankee on King Arthur’s Diamond: Mark Twain, Baseball, and the Making of a White Reunion.” Modern Language Association, Washington, DC, January 2022.
“The Race Novel: An Education.” American Studies Association, San Juan, October 2021.
“White Reunion: Vietnam Veterans and the Racial Politics of Post–Civil Rights War Remembrance,” Modern Language Association, Toronto, January 2021.
“Veteran America: Bakke, War Stories, and the Memory of Vietnam,” Modern Language Association, Toronto, January 2021.
“The Race Novel: An Education.” American Studies Association, Baltimore, November 2020 (canceled).
“The Race Front: Ruth Benedict, Gunnar Myrdal, and the Strange Career of Racial Liberalism.” Postwar Faculty Colloquium, Denton, TX, March 2020 (canceled).
“Operation Homegoing: Tourism and American Veterans in Postwar Vietnam.” Modern Language Association, Seattle, January 2020.
“Two Appeals to the World! W. E. B. Du Bois, Harry Truman, and the Turn from Human to Civil Rights.” Modern Language Association, Seattle, January 2020.
“White Liberal, Black Mask.” American Studies Association, Honolulu, November 2019.
“Whiteness on the Edge of Town: Bruce Springsteen and the Racial Politics of Heartland Rock.” Postwar Faculty Colloquium, Denton, TX, March 2019.
“The Philosophy of Creative Writing.” Modern Language Association, Chicago, January 2019.
“The Thin White Line.” American Studies Association, Atlanta, November 2018.
“MFA vs. PFC: Creative Writing and the War Story.” Postwar Faculty Colloquium, Denton, TX, April 2018.
“The Veteran and the Refugee.” Modern Language Association, New York, January 2018.
“A New New Normal: The Distinguished Warfare Medal and the Cultural Politics of Permanent War.” Modern Language Association, New York, January 2018.
“Defense in the Fifth Domain.” American Studies Association, Chicago, November 2017.
“Like a Refugee: Veterans, Vietnam, and the Making of a False Equivalence.” Association for Asian American Studies, Portland, OR, April 2017.
“Military Whiteness.” American Studies Association, Denver, November 2016.
“The Craft of Counterinsurgent Whiteness.” American Literature Association, San Francisco, May 2016.
“The Ethnicization of Veteran America: Larry Heinemann, Toni Morrison, and Military Whiteness after Vietnam.” American Comparative Literature Association, Cambridge, MA, March 2016.
“Human Rights, the Nayirah Testimony, and the Gulf War.” American Literature Association, Boston, May 2015.
“The Exceptionalist Optics of 9/11 Photography.” American Comparative Literature Association, Seattle, March 2015.
“Dispatches from the Drug Wars.” American Studies Association, Los Angeles, November 2014.
“Antiwar Liberalism against Liberal War.” Futures of American Studies Institute, Hanover, NH, June 2014.
“The Literary Afterlife of the Korean War.” American Literature Association, Washington, DC, May 2014.
“Airport Memory: Recalling Vietnam from the Terminal in Andrew Pham’s Travel Writing.” American Comparative Literature Association, New York, March 2014.
“Universality at War: Race, Nation, and Communism in Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go.” Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Oklahoma City, March 2014.
“The Sacrificial Enterprise: Negotiating Mutilation in William Dean Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes.” American Literature Association, Boston, May 2013.
“MLK at the LA Riots: Civil Rights, Memory, and Neoliberalism in Charles Johnson’s Dreamer.” Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Pittsburgh, March 2013.
“Graphic Ethics: Theorizing the Face in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Modern Language Association, Boston, January 2013.
“When Theory of Mind Fails: Race and Folk Psychology in William Faulkner’s Light in August.” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, Boston, April 2012.
“Iconographic Immersion in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” American Comparative Literature Association, Providence, March–April 2012.
COURSES TAUGHT
Texas Christian University
Graduate
English 60143: Methods in American Studies
English 55763: Race and Gender in American Literature
English 55213: Seminar in American Literature since 1900
English 55003: Introduction to Graduate Studies and the Profession of English
CRES 70001: Portfolio
Undergraduate
English 40753: Seminar in American Studies
English 40683: Studies in Twentieth-Century American Literature
English 40663: Transnational American Literature
English 30953: Post-1945 American Literature
English 30853: Asian American Literature
English 30693: US Multiethnic Literature
English 20553: Introduction to American Studies
English 20523: Sports and American Literature
English 20503: Major American Writers
CRES 20003: Seminar in Critical Race Theory
University of California, Irvine
Undergraduate
LIT JRN 103: Topics in Literary Journalism
University of Connecticut
Undergraduate
English 2203: American Literature since 1880
English 1011: Seminar in Writing through Literature
English 1010: Seminar in Academic Writing
SERVICE
Texas Christian University
Core Faculty, Department of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, 2015–
Associate Faculty, Department of Women and Gender Studies, 2015–
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, 2021–
Executive Committee, Department of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, 2021–
Personnel Advisory Committee, Department of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, 2020–22
Faculty Search Committee, Department of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, 2021–22
Curriculum Committee, Department of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, 2017–21
Graduate Pedagogy Mentor, Department of English, 2020–21
Undergraduate Studies Committee, Department of English, 2015–16, 2019–20
Undergraduate Council, AddRan College of Liberal Arts, 2017–20
Diversity Taskforce, Department of English, 2018–19
Faculty Search Committee, Department of English, 2017–18
Professional
Managing Editor, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, 2012–14
AWARDS
AddRan Distinguished Faculty Lecture, Texas Christian University, 2023
Humanities Institute Fellowship, University of Connecticut, 2022–23
Graduate Faculty of the Year Award, Department of English, Texas Christian University, 2022
Deans’ Research and Creativity Award finalist, Texas Christian University, 2021
Constance M. Rourke Prize finalist (best article in American Quarterly), American Studies Association, 2020
Research Award, Department of English, Texas Christian University, 2020
Junior Faculty Summer Research Program Grant, Texas Christian University, 2019
OpEd Project Fellowship, University of California, Merced, 2017
Mellon Sawyer Seminar Fellowship, University of California, Irvine, 2016–17
First Book Institute Fellowship, Pennsylvania State University, 2016
Junior Faculty Summer Research Program Grant, Texas Christian University, 2016
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
American Studies Association
Modern Language Association
Joseph Darda 