Matt Suazo joined the English faculty in 2016. He specializes in hemispheric American literature, early and nineteenth-century, and his courses at Kenyon speak further to his overlapping interests in authorship, postcolonial studies, the environment, and multi-ethnic U.S. literatures.
His current book project — "Wetland Americas: Literature, Race and the Mississippi River Valley in Translation, 1542-1884" — explores the circulation of discourses of race and environment within the U.S. and around the Atlantic World. In 2019, he completed work on this project as an AAS-National Endowment for the Humanities Long-term Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society.
He recently published a chapter in Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies (LSU), has another essay forthcoming in Neither the Time Nor the Place: Today’s Nineteenth Century (U Penn), and his academic writing has also appeared in boundary 2. While a PhD student in Literature and American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, his awards included a dissertation-year fellowship from the Humanities Institute, and he was honored by selection to the University of California President’s Society of Fellows. He has also held research fellowships at the John Carter Brown and Newberry Libraries.
Prof. Suazo came to Kenyon after teaching English at San Francisco State University, and he has also taught literature and first-year writing at UCSC and the University of New Orleans.
Areas of Expertise
Hemispheric American literature, early and nineteenth-century, literature and environment, postcolonial studies, slave narrative and autobiography
Education
2015 — Doctor of Philosophy from Univ of California Santa Cruz
2001 — Master of Arts from Univ New Orleans
1994 — Bachelor of Arts from Univ Virginia
Courses Recently Taught
Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors assign frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.
Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors will frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.
This course serves as an introduction to the literature and film produced by and about U.S. Latinos and Latinas, and to the theoretical approaches, such as borderlands theory, which have arisen from the lived experience of this diverse group. By focusing on the Latino/a experience and situating it squarely within an American literary tradition, the course examines the intersections of national origin or ancestry with other identity markers such as gender, race and sexuality. We take an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to connect literature and film with history, political science, psychology, art, sociology and so on. Thus, students read not only literary works, both visual and written, but also related works in other disciplines that speak to the issues raised by the texts. Specifically, the course critically explores the effects and literary expressions of internal and external migration, displacement and belonging, nation and citizenship, code-switching and other ways in which Latinos and Latinas have made sense of their experiences in the United States. Beginning with 16th-century accounts by Spaniards in areas that would eventually become part of the United States and moving to the present day, the class familiarizes students with the culture(s) of a group that plays an important role in our national narrative, and with the issues that this group grapples with on our national stage. This counts toward the post-1900 and diversity requirements for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Only open to first-year and sophomore students.
While not a comprehensive survey, this course introduces students to a wide range of literature written by African Americans between the mid-19th century and the present. In regard to the chosen authors, the aim is a balance of coverage and depth that establishes a foundation for further study. To that end, the assigned primary readings are shorter, rather than longer, and are complemented by a selection of essential critical texts. To organize our reading, we examine literary works in respect to their historical and cultural contexts, and consider the politics of African American literature in the United States: the complex relationships between race, reception and canon-building in the academy, as well as the ways in which Black writing has informed — and been informed by — the struggles for freedom, civil rights and social justice. This counts toward the diversity and post-1900 requirements for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Open only to first-year and sophomore students.
"I celebrate myself and sing myself, / And what I shall assume you shall assume," asserts Walt Whitman. Emily Dickinson queries, "I'm Nobody — who are you?" This course focuses in depth on the poetic works of these two 19th-century American poets, paying attention to the development of their distinctive poetry and their careers, their publication history and reception, the relationship between their work and lives, and their influence on subsequent generations of writers. We pay particular attention to their formal innovations and poetic principles. Students write weekly response papers, including projects in poetic imitation, and two longer (nine- to 12-page) essays. This counts toward the 1700-1900 requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 210-291 or junior standing.
For the United States, as it made the transition from republic to nation, the period between the Revolutionary and Civil wars was one of expansion. The nation’s drive to increase its territory went hand-in-hand with its desire to wield political influence across the continent and around the American hemisphere. Meanwhile, an emerging and growing middle class was bound by a proliferating culture of print. In 1800, only a few Americans owned more than a Bible and one or two practical books; however, by mid-century most everyone read for pleasure, and fiction — in newspapers, magazines and books — was what they most often consumed. The degree to which Americans cohered as a nation around popular fiction, the short story and the novel, is the guiding concern of this course. With attention to the printed status of our texts, we read in short and long form across a variety of genres, from novels of manners to potboilers to serious works of social critique. We thus are very interested in how the cultural aspect of literature — the shared experience of reading — intersected with its social and political function as the nation expanded: as it exerted its “Manifest Destiny,” coped with agricultural and urban industrialization and confronted the questions of Native American and women’s rights, as well as slavery. As we see, the term “domestic sensations” takes on many connotations. This counts toward the 1700-1900 requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 210-291 or junior standing.
In the United States context, the New Orleans and Louisiana contribution to Southern literary regionalism has traditionally included Kate Chopin, George Washington Cable and Lafcadio Hearn. Rather than focus on a handful of late-19th-century writers, this course takes a broader view of the time and space of the region in American literature. Beginning with the colonial era, we read the Mississippi River Valley as an environmental region that shaped the early and 19th-century imagery of North America on a number of comparative scales that included the territory, the nation and the city, as well as the New World and the West. In this expanded context, we arrive at the work of the traditional regionalists with a richer understanding of the historical intersections of nature and culture that support their literary representations. For English majors, this course meets the 1700-1900 requirement. In environmental studies, it satisfies the cultures and societies requirement. Prerequisite: ENGL 210-291 or junior standing.
When does a distinctly American literature emerge? In the United States, the answer is often the Early Republic (c. 1789-1830) or the “American Renaissance” (c. 1830-1865), though others say that it begins with the Puritans in 17th-century New England. Each of these answers, however, ignores much of the broader colonial history of the Americas and takes a fairly narrow view of what constitutes “American-ness.” This course, beginning with early European contact with the New World, instead considers the emergence of U.S. national literature within an American hemisphere that was shaped by a dynamic and often violent process of cultural contact and exchange. It is a story in which concepts of racial difference were created through the contest for territorial expansion, religious and secular views of the world were vying for ascendancy, and the revolutionary ideals of the Atlantic world were unevenly fulfilled. In this expanded context, we read Spanish, French and English chronicles of conquest and settlement in dialogue with a range of Amerindian and African diasporic texts: These include oral and pictorial accounts, as well as spiritual autobiography and slave narrative. From sermons and devotional poetry to speeches and manifestos, we also explore how public and private life in the colonies intersected with religious and political concerns. Given this background, we then consider how more mainstream genres of poetry and fiction, including the novel, took shape in the early U.S. Along with selected critical texts, authors may include Cabeza de Vaca, Anne Bradstreet, Olaudah Equiano, Thomas Jefferson, Phillis Wheatley, Chateaubriand and William Apess. This counts toward either the pre-1700 or the 1700-1900 requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 210-291 or junior standing.
This seminar requires students to undertake a research paper of their own design, within the context of a course that ranges across genres, literary periods and national borders. Students study literary works within a variety of critical, historical, cultural and theoretical contexts. All sections of the course seek to extend the range of interpretive strategies students can use to undertake a major literary research project. Each student completes a research paper of 15 to 17 pages. Senior English majors pursuing an emphasis in creative writing are required to take ENGL 405 instead. Students pursuing honors will take ENGL 497 instead. Senior standing and English major or permission of instructor.
Individual study in English is a privilege reserved for senior majors who want to pursue a course of reading or complete a writing project on a topic not regularly offered in the curriculum. Because individual study is one option in a rich and varied English curriculum, it is intended to supplement, not take the place of, coursework, and it cannot normally be used to fulfill requirements for the major. An IS earns the student 0.5 units of credit, although in special cases it may be designed to earn 0.25 units. To qualify to enroll in an individual study, a student must identify a member of the English department willing to direct the project. In consultation with that faculty member, the student must write a one- to two-page proposal that the department chair must approve before the IS can go forward. The chair’s approval is required to ensure that no single faculty member becomes overburdened by directing too many IS courses. In the proposal, the student should provide a preliminary bibliography (and/or set of specific problems, goals and tasks) for the course, outline a specific schedule of reading and/or writing assignments, and describe in some detail the methods of assessment (e.g., a short story to be submitted for evaluation biweekly; a 30-page research paper submitted at course’s end, with rough drafts due at given intervals). Students should also briefly describe any prior coursework that particularly qualifies them for their proposed individual studies. The department expects IS students to meet regularly with their instructors for at least one hour per week, or the equivalent, at the discretion of the instructor. The amount of work submitted for a grade in an IS should approximate at least that required, on average, in 400-level English courses. In the case of group individual studies, a single proposal may be submitted, assuming that all group members follow the same protocols. Because students must enroll for individual studies by the seventh class day of each semester, they should begin discussion of their proposed individual study well in advance, preferably the semester before, so that there is time to devise the proposal and seek departmental approval.
