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Kenneth Lota1100 West NC Highway 54 Bypass, Apartment 28AChapel Hill, NC 27516lota@live.unc.edu, or kayska1@504-722-7909Education2012-2018 Doctor of Philosophy in English, University of North Carolina, Chapel HillDissertation title: “The Post-Noir Novel: Pulp Genre, Alienation, and the Turn from Postmodernism in Contemporary American Fiction”Committee: Jennifer Ho (director), Heidi Kim, Matthew Taylor, Rick Warner, Michelle RobinsonThe dissertation argues that contemporary fiction authors are reinventing the tropes of hard-boiled crime fiction and film noir as a way of dealing with problems of 21st-century social alienation. Tracing alienation to a variety of factors – including race, sexuality, technology, and urban life – the dissertation analyzes how authors such as Whitehead, Chabon, Abbott, Pynchon, and others attempt to resolve problems that classic noir is famous for posing but never resolving itself.2010-2012 Master of Arts in English, University of Virginia, CharlottesvilleDegree Received May 2012; Focus: 20th/21st Century American LiteratureMaster’s Thesis: “Re-Oriented: Reinventing Orientalism in Contemporary Fiction” Bachelor of Arts, Tulane University, New OrleansMajor: American LiteratureDegree Received Summa cum Laude with Departmental Honors, May 2010Undergraduate Honors Thesis: “The Shape of the Road is the Road: Cormac McCarthy and the American Road Narrative”Publications“Cool Girls and Bad Girls: Reinventing the Femme Fatale in Contemporary Fiction.” Interdisciplinary Humanities 33.1 (Spring 2016): 150 – 170. Peer-reviewed.Teaching Experience2018 Popular Genres: Genre EvolutionIn this class, I trace the history of five distinct generic traditions – detective fiction, science fiction, horror, children’s literature, and the graphic novel – from early 19th- and 20th-century roots to the contemporary moment. Authors studied include Colson Whitehead, Charlie Jane Anders, Han Kang, Lewis Carroll, Alan Moore, Marjorie Liu, and Neil Gaiman, among others.2017 Contemporary Literature: Alternatives to RealismThis class provided students with a wide-ranging survey of contemporary literature through a focus on experimental, surreal, speculative, and fantastical texts. Authors studied included Mark Z. Danielewski, Nicole Krauss, Alison Bechdel, Martin McDonagh, Colson Whitehead, David Mitchell, and Martin Amis, among others.2016 Film AnalysisThis class surveyed classical and contemporary cinema, asking students to focus on the relationship between a film’s narrative and thematic goals and its technical and formal strategies. Filmmakers studied included Wes Anderson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick, Shane Carruth, Maya Deren, Debra Granik, and Spike Lee. 2013-2017 Rhetoric and CompositionI have taught the freshman composition class at UNC many times. In three units devoted respectively to the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, I have trained students in the fundamental skills of research, argumentation, and analysis. Assignments have included oral presentations modelled on John Oliver’s extended arguments from Last Week Tonight and mock-conference papers about style and content in contemporary film.Select Conference Presentations2017 “Reading the Rhetoric of?The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil?in the Age of Trump,” George Saunders panel, ALA Conference, Boston, MA. 2017 “Deconstructing the Hard-Boiled Male in Megan Abbott’s The Song Is You,” “Hard-Boiled Femininities” panel, ALA Symposium on Crime Fiction, Chicago, IL.2015 “Cool/Fatale: Gone Girl, Noir, and Gender Roles,” “Women Troubling, Troubling Women” panel, SAMLA 87, Durham, NC. 2015 “‘Cool Girls’ and Bad Girls: Reinventing the Femme Fatale in Contemporary American Fiction,” National Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, New Orleans, LA.2013 “How to Make a Tragedy into a Comedy, and How to Make a Tragedy into More of a Tragedy: Peter Brook’s King Lear and Christopher Moore’s Fool,” National Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, Washington, D.C.2012 “Re-working Representation of the Orient in Neil Gaiman’s ‘Ramadan.’ ” International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, FL.2011 “A History of Violence: Cormac McCarthy’s History of the Road,” National Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association Conference, San Antonio, TX. Also moderated the panel.Honors and Awards2017 Graduate School Summer Research Fellowship2010 Senior Scholar Award in English, Tulane University2010 Departmental Honors, Summa cum Laude Degree, Tulane University 2009-2010 President, Sigma Tau Delta (English Honor Society), Tulane chapter 2010 Phi Beta Kappa, Inducted2010 Omicron Delta Kappa, Member, Inducted2006-2010 Tulane Distinguished Scholars Award Research and Service2016 Research assistant to Dr. Jennifer Ho 2014 Guest lecture on Chinatown for Dr. Jennifer Ho’s “California: A State of Social Change” class 2014 Graduate Research Consultant to Dr. Michelle Robinson’s “The Film Director as Public Intellectual” course 2013-present Contributor to Ethos Review, 2015 Graduate Research Consultant, English 105: Composition and Rhetoric 2012-2013 SITES Intern, UNC 2012 Grader to Dr. Peter Baker, History of the English Language course, UVA 2011 Research assistant to Dr. Mark Edmundson, UVA2011 Research assistant to Dr. Alison Booth, Collective Biographies of Women on-line project, UVA2010-2012 Creator and organizer of “Roman Noir/Film Noir” reading group, UVA 2011-2012 Organizer of “Recent Novel” reading group, UVA ................
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