Spencer Tricker
Asst Prof- English

Education

Ph.D., University of Miami, 2018

M.A., University of Central Florida, 2012

B.A., New York University, 2009

Areas of Research and Teaching

• American Literature (nineteenth century to present)
• Asian American Studies
• Transpacific Studies
• Race and Ethnic Studies
• Postcolonial Studies
• Literary Criticism and Theory
• African American Literature
• Multiethnic Literatures of the United States

Courses

ENGL 461: Introduction to Theory / Senior Seminar

ENGL 440: Studies in Literary History - Transpacific Crossings in American Literature and Film

ENGL 366: Perspectives: Community and Consumer Culture in American Literature and Music

ENGL 336: American Literature: Realism to Contemporary

ENGL 210: Forms and Genres: Roots (and Offshoots) of the African American Gothic Tale

ENGL 209: Introduction to Literary Analysis

ENGL 165: Writing and Rhetoric: Writing About Public Health and Social Justice Across the Disciplines

Biography

Dr. Spencer Tricker completed his Ph.D. in English at the University of Miami in 2018. Before coming to Longwood, he taught courses in literature, popular culture, and composition at the University of Miami, Clemson University, the University of Central Florida, and Seminole State College.

As a scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, transpacific studies, and Asian American studies, Dr. Tricker's research explores issues of race, U.S. imperialism, and immigration. His book manuscript, Imminent Communities: Liberalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Empire in Transpacific Literature (1850-1920), examines these issues in relation to geopolitics, periodical culture, and literary aesthetics. An article from this project, “‘Five Dusky Phantoms’: Gothic Form and Cosmopolitan Shipwreck in Melville's Moby-Dick” appears in the journal Studies in American Fiction and won the Melville Society’s annual Hennig Cohen prize in 2018 for the “best article, book chapter, or essay in a book about Herman Melville.

Recently, Dr. Tricker has been involved in the creation of a new minor in Race and Ethnic Studies at Longwood University. In Spring 2021, he will co-teach a pilot to the Introduction to Race and Ethnic Studies course with Professor Shayla Betts (Department of Social Work).

Selected Publications:

• Forthcoming. "Philippines / United States: David Fagen Defects to the Filipino Army, 1899." Crossings: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture at a Juncture, ed. Edward Sugden. Collection contracted with Edinburgh University Press.
• "Pan's Burden: Intertextual Aesthetics and Illiberal Cosmopolitanism in Sui Sin Far's 'Eurasian' Stories." American Literary Realism, vol. 52, no. 3 (2020): 234-63.
• "'Five Dusky Phantoms': Gothic Form and Cosmopolitan Shipwreck in Melville's Moby-Dick." Studies in American Fiction, vol. 44, no. 1 (2017): 1-26

Podcasts:

• C19: America in the 19th Century Podcast Episode: "Staying with the Hypothesis: Getting Started with Digital Humanities Research and Pedagogy." Producer and interviewer. Season 3, episode 5. 6 August 2020.