trickers@longwood.edu | |
Phone | (434) 395-2167 |
Department | English and Modern Languages |
Office | Grainger G08 |
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
Courses
ENGL 461: Introduction to Theory / Senior Seminar
ENGL 440: Transpacific Crossings in American Literature and Film
Emphasizing migration and other forms of travel, this course focuses on literature and films by Asian American and Pacific Islander writers from the late nineteenth century to the present. We read or watch in several genres including the novel, modern drama, the graphic novel, as well as documentary and dramatic film. Authors include Winnifred Eaton (Onoto Watanna), Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far), Lili'uokalani, Carlos Bulosan, David Henry Hwang, Miné Okubo, Epeli Hau'ofa, Haunani-Kay Trask, and G.B. Tran.
ENGL 366: Perspectives: Community and Consumer Culture in American Literature and Music
This course examines the tension between community and consumer culture in several genres of literature and music, with an emphasis on the twentieth century. Featured authors and artists include W. E. B. Du Bois, William Faulkner, August Wilson, Sandra Cisneros, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Gil-Scott Heron, Dolly Parton, and John Prine.
ENGL 336: American Literature: Realism to Contemporary
A survey of American literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Authors typically include Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Wong Chin Foo, Zora Neale Hurston, Allen Ginsberg, Bienvenido Santos, James Baldwin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sandra Cisneros, and Ed Park.
HONS 295: Introduction to Race and Ethnic Studies
ENGL 210: Roots (and Offshoots) of the African American Gothic Tale
This course explores African American gothic narratives and their twin sources: the nineteenth-century slave narrative and the nineteenth-century gothic tale. We read examples of each, but also look at variations on gothic narrative by contemporary Black writers and filmmakers. Authors/filmmakers include Harriet Jacobs, Pauline Hopkins, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Mat Johnson.
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 drawn from this project, “‘Five Dusky Phantoms’: Gothic Form and Cosmopolitan Shipwreck in Melville's Moby-Dick” 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:
Podcasts: