Ryan Heryford, PhD Faculty Profile

Photo of Ryan Heryford

Ryan  Heryford, PhD

Associate Professor

Department of English

Research and Teaching Interests: 19th and 20th Century American Literature; Environmental Humanities and Narratives of Environmental Justice; De-colonial Studies; Poetry and Poetics; Film Criticism

  • Ph.D. Literature and Cultural Studies - University of California, San Diego

Not teaching this semester.

Recent Articles

Heryford, Ryan. "The Username and the Lyric “I”: Encountering Ecopoetic Theory Within the Digital Humanities" ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. ed. Scott Slovic. Oxford University Press. Fall, 2020.

Heryford, Ryan. "'The Mold-life:' Dickinson's Poetics of Decay" The Emily Dickinson Journal. ed. James Guthrie. Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume XXIX, No. 1, Spring, 2020

Heryford, Ryan. "the breath of flowers that perished:" The Imperial Ecologies of Mark Twain's Early Letters" in The Mark Twain Annual, Special Edition: "Mark Twain and the Natural World." ed. Ben Click and Joseph Csicsilia. Penn State University Press, Volume 17, November, 2019

Recent Book Chapters

Heryford, Ryan. "the word for bringing bodies back from water:" Oceanic Ecopoetics, Black Life, and the Re-Imagining of Extinction" in Contesting Extinction: Critical Relationalities, Regenerative Futures. ed. Suzanne McCullagh, Catherine Wagner, Iñaki Pradanos, Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan, and Ryan Gunderson. Rowman and Littlefield Press, 2021

Heryford, Ryan. “Mink Snopes’ Shavasana: Body, Relation, and Exchange in Faulkner’s Economies of Being” in Faulkner and Money. ed. Jay Watson. Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 2019

Heryford, Ryan. “Thomas Sutpen’s Geography Lesson: Environmental Obscurities and Racial Remapping in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!” in Faulkner’s Geographies. ed. Jay Watson and Ann Abadie. Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 2015

Recent Book Reviews

Influx and Eflux: Writing Up With Walt Whitman. (Duke U. Press, 2020) in Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities. Book Review ed. Fatma Aykanat. Cappadocia Environmental Humanities Center Press (Open Access). (Vol. 1, Issue 2, Winter 2020)

Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California. ed. Lucille Lang Day and Ruth Nolan" in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Book Review ed. Lisa Ottum. Oxford University Press. Vol. 26, Issue 2, Spring 2019.

Recomposing Ecopoetics: North American Poetry of the Self-Conscious Anthropocene by Lynn Keller (U. of Virginia P, 2018) in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Book Review ed. Lisa Ottum. Oxford University Press. Vol. 27, Issue 2, Spring 2020.

 

"the word for bringing bodies back from water:" Oceanic Ecopoetics, Black Life, and the Re-Imagining of Extinction" Approaching Extinction/Contesting Extinction Symposium. Environmental Humanities Research Cluster. Miami University of Ohio (March, 2020)

"'...I tremble to meet them': Thoreau's Impersonal Bodies" in Thoreau and the Limits of the Human. Sponsored by the Thoreau Society. Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference. Seattle (January, 2020)

“The ‘Odd Inches’: Melville’s Measured Incorporeal” Melville's Measures: An International Conference. Université de Lille & Université Paris, Diderot. (October, 2019)

"'the breath of flowers that perished:' Imperial Ecologies in Mark Twain's Early Letters" 6th Annual Mark Twain Research Center Quarry Farm Symposium: "Mark Twain and Nature" Mark Twain Research Center, Elmira College, NY (October, 2019)

“the strength to perish is sometimes withheld:’ Dickinson's 'Western' Poetics of Decomposition” “To another Sea”: Dickinson, Environment, and the West The Emily Dickinson International Society. Asilomar, CA (August, 2019)

"but drowned the infinite:" Reading Melville's Moby-Dick in the Wake of Climate Change." The San Francisco Maritime Research Center's Moby-Dick Lecture Series. San Francisco Maritime National Park, California (September, 2018)

"'The Mold-life - all forgotten - now -:' Dickinson's Entangled Decompositions" in Dickinson's Environments. The Emily Dickinson International Society Annual Meeting: Dickinson in the Company of Others. Amherst College (August, 2018)

"Concentrating “the snugness:” Body, Relation and Being in a Melvillean Anthropocene" in Melville and the Anthropocene. Organized by the Melville Society and the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE). The American Literature Association Annual Conference, 2018. San Francisco (May, 2018)

 “Melancholy and Instant Messaging in the Poetry of James Merrill and John Ashbery” in Passage and Limit: Poetic Trajectories in the Environmental Humanities (Seminar) The American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Conference, 2018. University of California, Los Angeles (March, 2018)

“The Username and the Lyric ‘I’: Exploring Ecopoetic Theory in the Age of the Digital Cloud” in Poetry and Poetics. Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Conference, 2017. Chaminade University (November, 2017)

“more than flesh should be asked to stand:” Being, Relation, and Exchange in Faulkner’s Embodied Economies” Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 2017. University of Mississippi (July, 2017)

“Generating the Cloud: Ecopoetic Theory in the Age of New Materialism” Critical Perspectives on Ecopoetics. The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) Biennial Conference, 2017. Wayne State University (June, 2017)

“Off the Face of the Earth: Oceanic Assemblages and Ecocritical Imperialisms” The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture After 1900. University of Louisville. (February, 2017)

 “The Voracious Lung Projects: Reading Oceanic Poetry in an Epoch of Rising Tides” English Department Tuesday Talk Series. California State University East Bay (February, 2017)

Outstanding Researcher Award. California State University, East Bay. (2019-2020)

2020 Quarry Farm Fellow. Mark Twain Research Center. (2020-2021)

The Dickinson Scholar Award. The Emily Dickinson International Society. (2018-2019)

Grant for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Curriculum Development Program. Office of University Diversity. California State University, East Bay (2017-2018)

Exceptional Levels of Service to Students Award. California State University, East Bay. (2017-2018; 2018-2019)

Vice-Chair, Academic Senate. California State University, East Bay. (2020-2021)

Academic Senator, CLASS Representative. Academic Senate. California State University, East Bay (2019-2020; 2020-2022)

Faculty Member, Executive Campus Sustainability Committee. California State University, East Bay. (2018-2019; 2019-2020; 2020-2021)

Ad Hoc Sustainability Committee. Member (2017-2020) Secretary (2017-2018) Chair (2018-2019; 2019-2020)