Carla Billitteri
Associate Professor
311 Neville Hall
(207) 581-3836
carla.billitteri@umit.maine.edu

Office Hours

Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:30-1:30pm

Academic Positions

Current

• Associate Professor, University of Maine, English Department, 2008-
• Associate Faculty, National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine, 2008-
• External Faculty, Doctoral Program in Anglo-American Studies, University of Catania, Italy, 2003-
• Examiner, Critical Languages Program, University of Maine, 2000-

Previous

• Assistant Professor, University of Maine, English Department, 2002-2008
• Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Maine, English Department, 2001-2002
• Lecturer, University of Maine, English Department, 1999-2001
• Lecturer, D’Youville College, English Department, 1999

Education

• Ph.D., English, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2001
• M.A., English, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1995
• Laurea, magna cum laude, Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Catania, Italy, 1989

Foreign Languages
Italian (native speaker) and French

Current Book Project
I am currently working on two books: a study of politics and aesthetics among the modernist poets and a monograph on Delmore Schwartz for European scholars

Areas of Specialization
Primary
Poetry and Poetics, Critical Theory

Additional
Gender and Literature, Narratology, Drama, Italian Poetry

Grants and Fellowships

• Curriculum Development Grant, Women’s Studies Program, University of Maine at Orono, Summer 2003
• Research Fellowship, Graduate Group in Marxist Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1994-1995
• Research Fellowship, Centro di Studi Americani, Rome, Italy, 1989
• Research Grant, University of Catania, Italy, 1989
• Research Fellowship, Centro di Studi Americani, Rome, Italy, 1988

Publications

Book

Language and the Renewal of Society in Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson: The American Cratylus (Palgrave Macmillan 2009)

Abstract: This book takes up the utopian desire for a perfect language of words that gives direct expression to the real, known in Western thought as Cratylism, and its impact on the social visions and poetic projects of three of the most intellectually ambitious of American writers, Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson. A coda looks at the work of the Language writers, who carry forward this tradition in surprising ways. Based on close readings of theoretical and poetic texts, and drawing on archival research, Language and the Renewal of Society makes two basic claims: that belief in an intrinsic relationship between words and things is linked in American poetry to utopian social projects; and that poets with a deep understanding of how language operates are nonetheless attracted to this belief—despite recognizing its fantastic elements—because it allows them to articulate a social mandate for poetry.

Articles

• “The Necessary Experience of Error,” How2 3.3 (Spring 2009) Special Feature: “Reading Carla Harryman” http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal//vol_3_no_3/harryman/
• “Stories, Not History: Laura Riding’s Progress of Truth,” Arizona Quarterly 65.1 (Spring 2009): 85-105
  “Lyn Hejinian’s Poetics of the Middle,” Aerial 10, forthcoming
• “A Form of Tidiness: Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Work of Poetry-Writing,” Textual Practice 22.2 (June 2008): 315-36
• “William Carlos Williams and the Politics of Form,” The Journal of Modern Literature 30:2 (Winter 2007): 42-63
• “Riding-Graves: The Meaning of Collaboration,” Gravesiana 3:1 (2007): 86-100
• “The Passion of Becoming an Object,” Paideuma 35.1-2 (Spring-Fall 2006): 17-32
• “Doomsday: Passages in Laura Riding’s Poetics,” Chloroform: An Aesthetics of Critical Writing (Spring 1997): 174-84

Notes

• “Introduction to Alda Merini, I am a Furious Little Bee” Oakland, CA: Hooke Press, 2008
• O sorriso de Laura Riding” (Laura Riding’s Smile), co-authored with Benjamin Friedlander, in Laura Riding, Mindscapes: Poemas, edited and translated by Rodrigo Garcia Lopes (Brazil: Illuminuras, 2004): 245-47
• “Translator’s Note: Patrizia Vicinelli,” How2, September 2000
• (http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/however/v1_4_2000/current/index.html)
• “Five Italian Poets: Introductory Remarks,” 99 Poets/1999: An International Poetics Symposium, edited by Charles Bernstein, published as Boundary2 26:1, Spring 1999
• “Partage of Realities: A Logic of Infra‑modal Destinerrance,” Rif/t, no. 4, January 1995

Translations

• “Maria Attanasio, Four Poems,” Aufgabe 7 (2008)
• Alda Merini, I am a Furious Little Bee (Oakland, CA: Hooke Press, 2008)
• “Salvatore Camilleri, ‘Four Hats’” (co-translated with Benjamin Friedlander), Fascicle, no. 1, Summer 2005 (http://www.fascicle.com/issue01/main/contents_frameset.htm)
• “Joan Perucho, ‘Twenty Three Poems’” (co-translated with Benjamin Friedlander), Fascicle, no. 1, Summer 2005 (http://www.fascicle.com/issue01/main/contents_frameset.htm)
• Italian Epigrams (co-translated with Benjamin Friedlander) (Catania: Porci con le Ali, 2001)
• “Patrizia Vicinelli, Three Poems,” How2, September 2000 (http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/however/v1_4_2000/current/index.html)
• “Five Italian Authors: Gianni D’Elia, Mara Cini, Milli Graffi, Flavio Ermini, Renato Barilli,” 99 Poets/1999: An International Poetics Symposium, edited by Charles Bernstein, Boundary2 26:1, Spring 1999
• “Cieli” and “Finisterre” (from Nanni Balestrini, Ipocalisse), Private Arts, Spring 1998
• “Sommerbird” and “Vortex” (from Nanni Balestrini, Ipocalisse), Rif/t, no. 4, January 1995
• “Turchese” (from Gianni D’Elia, Non per chi va), I Am a Child: Poetry After Robert Duncan and Bruce Andrews, edited by William R. Howe (Buffalo: Tailspin Press, 1995)

Conferences

• “The Politics of the Inactual in Charles Olson’s Poetics,” Charles Olson Symposium, Clark University, March 2010
• “‘A Necessary Kind of Experience’: Carla Harryman’s Textual Hybridity,” Twentieth Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, February 2008
• “Memetics of the Image: The Late Poetics of Charles Olson,” American Literature Association, Boston, May 2007
• “‘A Relation Whose Form is Contradiction’: Figurations of Self in Paul Valéry and Laura (Riding) Jackson,” Modernist Studies Association International Conference, Chicago, November 2005
• “A Form of Tidiness: Laura Riding’s Responses to 1930s Political Crises,” Modernist Studies Association International Conference, Vancouver, B. C., September 2004
• “Auratic Politics: The Aristocratic Revolution of Williams Carlos Williams,” Poetries of the 1940s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2004
• “The Beautiful Semblance of Authenticity,” Modernist Studies Association International Conference, Birmingham, U. K., September 2003
• “Lyn Hejinian’s Poetics of Uncertainty,” Twentieth Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, February 2003
• “Riding/Graves: The Meaning of Collaboration,” Graves Conference 2000: Robert Graves in America, State University of New York at Buffalo, June 2000
• “Fables of Meaning: History and Storytelling in Laura Riding’s Short Fiction,” Symposium on Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Promise of Language, Cornell University, October 1998
• “The Passion of Becoming an Object: The Matter of Subjectivity in Language Writing,” Twentieth Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, February 1998
• “Until the End of History: Laura Riding’s Progress of Stories,” NEMLA Conference, Philadelphia, April 1997
• “Charles Olson and the Symbiotic Economy of Speech and Writing,” Poetries of the 1950s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 1996
• “Notes on Translating Nanni Balestrini’s Ipocalisse,” The Future of Poetry, State University of New York at Albany, January 1995

Lectures

• “Walt Whitman and the Power of Names,” University of Catania, Italy, July 2008
• “Politics and Poetry in the 1930s: Laura (Riding) Jackson,” Socialist and Marxist Studies Luncheon Series, University of Maine, April 2007
• “Charles Olson and the Matter of Writing,” University of Catania, Italy, July 2006
• “Truth or Method: Laura (Riding) Jackson’s Poetic Project,” University of Catania, Italy, July 2005
• “Luigi Pirandello’s Theatre: Six Characters in Search of an Author,” The Maine Masque, University of Maine, April 2005
• “Acts of Reading, Acts of Gender: The Practice of Feminist Literary Criticism,” Women in the Curriculum Lunch Series, University of Maine, November 2004
• “William Carlos Williams and the Politics of Form,” University of Catania, Italy, July 2004
• “Interpellation, Gender, and the Question of the Feminine in Feminist Theory,” Graduate Program in Women’s Studies, University of Maine, November 2003
• “A Poetics of Uncertainty,” University of Catania, Italy, July 2003
• “Virginia Woolf To The Lighthouse: An Epistemic Feminist Novel,” Honors College, University of Maine, Spring 2002

Other Scholarly Activity

• Chair, Panel on “Strange Visions: Versions of the Visual in Contemporary Women’s Cross-Genre Poetry,” Lifting Belly High: A Conference on Women’s Poetry since 1900, Duquesne University, September 2008
• Chair, Plenary Poetry Reading by Nicole Brossard, The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2008
• Chair, Panel on “Language Poetry and Theory,” The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2008
• Chair, Panel on “New Narrative, New Sentence, New Left,” The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2008
• Chair, Panel on “Erotics, Embodiment, Negation,” The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2008
• Conference Steering Committee, The Poetry of the 1970s, National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine at Orono, Fall 2007-Summer 2008
• Chair, Plenary Poetry Reading by Lyn Hejinian, Poetries of the 1940s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2004
• Chair, Panel on “Gwendolyn Brooks, Poetry and Prose,” Poetries of the 1940s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine, Orono, June 2004
• Reading of Italian Epigrams (co-translated and co-presented with Benjamin Friedlander), Terry Plunket Poetry Festival, University of Maine at Augusta, April 2004
• Respondent, Seminar on Modernism and Politics, Modernist Studies Association International Conference, Birmingham, U.K., September 2003
• Conference Steering Committee, Poetries of the 1940s, National Poetry Foundation International Conference, University of Maine at Orono, Fall 2003-Summer 2004

Professional Activity

• University of Maine, Faculty Senate, Fall 2004-Spring 2008
• Service and Outreach Committee, Faculty Senate, Fall 2007-Spring 2008
• CLAS Representative, Committee on Committees, Faculty Senate, Fall 2004-Spring 2007
• Association for the Studies of Narrative, 2002-2005
• Modern Language Association, 2000-present
• Modernist Studies Association, 2000-present
• Critical Languages Program, University of Maine, 2000-present
• International Students Committee, English Department, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1995-1997
• Conference Organizer, Graduate Conference in Marxist Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo, Spring 1995

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