Expertise

First Year Writing, American Literature, Ethnic American Literature, Myth and Symbol, Modern Poetry, Literacy Narratives

 

Biography

Peter Puchek joined Temple in 2003 and has published peer-reviewed articles on William Faulkner’s fiction and on the poetry of Robert Browning, T. S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, and Anne Waldman. His primary research area is American Studies, particularly the immigrant experience and related genres and concepts like literacy narratives, the melting pot, and multi-ethnic literature. After graduating from Haverford College in 1979, he worked for more than ten years in administration at several large life insurance companies. Prior to Temple, Puchek taught at West Chester University, the University of Pennsylvania, DeSales University, Northampton Community College, and Lehigh University, where he received his Ph.D. in American Literature. He is a four-time winner of Temple’s First Year Writing Program Outstanding Instructor Award, and his current scholarly project is on nineteenth-century Pennsylvania Quaker artist Edward Hicks, painter of the “Peaceable Kingdom” series. His most recent conference papers were on women in the art world, as both gallerists and painters, and on the significance of the apocalyptical in Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.

 

Selected Publications

• “Semiotics and Creation: Anne Waldman’s ‘Iovis’ and Body Poetics.” Literature and Psychology 49.1-2 (2003): 39-64.
• “Faulkner’s ‘Light in August’: Epiphany, Eternity, and Time.” Southern Quarterly 36.1 (1997): 25-36.

Courses Taught

• English 0701: Introduction to Academic Discourse
• English 0802: Analytical Reading and Writing
• Quest for Utopia
• Dissent in America
• Myth and Symbol
• Modern Poetry
• American Romanticism
• American Literature surveys 1 and 2
• British Literature surveys 1 and 2
• British Romanticism
• Shakespeare in Movies