Eric Sonstroem

Associate Professor, English

Ph.D., Indiana University, 1999.

B.A., Wesleyan University, 1988.

Selected Projects/Papers/Publications:

• My current project is a book-length study of the impact of population growth on the Romantic ideology, entitled Romantic Cosmology as Crowd Control.
• "The Cannibal and the Aristocratic Vampire: Polidori's Uneasy Hybrid" under consideration at Nineteenth-Century Contexts.
• "Beachcomber Byron(s): The Materiality of Nature in the Contact Zone of Romantic-Era Anthropology." North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference. Lafayette, Indiana, September 2006.
• "The Future, After the Year 2000." Academic Track of the World Science Fiction Convention, Los Angeles, California, August 2006.
• "Do You Really Want a Revolution? CyberTheory Meets Real-Life Pedagogical Practice in FrankenMoo and the Conventional Literature Classroom."  College Literature.  33.3, Summer 2006.
• "Repetition and the Work of Hypertextual Mourning: Ryman's 253 and the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt."  Invisible Culture 8, 2004.
• "Flat Emily." Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference, San Diego, CA, March, 2005.
• Book review essay of Onno Oerlemans. Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature for Configurations (the journal of the Science and Literature Society), 2004.
• "The Revenant, the Cannibal, and the Birth of the Aristo-Vamp: Polidori's Uneasy Hybrid in 'The Vampyre.'" International Conference in Romanticism, Laredo, TX, October, 2004.
• "Archaeology of the Future: Reading Science Fictional Futures / Learning About the Past."  Nor/Eas Con 4, 62nd Annual World Science Fiction Convention.  Boston, MA, September, 2004.
• "Stealth Circus." Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference, San Antonio, TX, April, 2004.
• "Malthus Park: Jane Austen and the Specter of Malthusian History."  North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference, London, Ontario, August, 2002.
• "Laplace's Deamon and Blake's Fragmentary Re-Appropriation of Absolute Knowledge." Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies conference, George Mason University, April 2002.
• "Opening Textual Space in the Frankenstein MOO:  Beyond 'Reader Response.'" Technology in the College English Classroom: Literature, Culture, Pedagogy.  University of North Carolina, Greensboro, April, 2002.
• "'Something Evermore About To Be': Malthus and the Mathematics of the Sublime in the Prelude." North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference, University of Washington, Seattle, August, 2001.
• "De Quincey's Tea Table." Romantic Studies Conference on Thomas De Quincey, Bristol University, Bristol, UK, May, 2001.
• FrankenMOO.  An interactive and interpretive electronic architecture for teaching and exploring Shelley's Frankenstein for the Romantic Circles website.  With Ron Broglio, Spring 2001.   
• "Electronic Cross-Fertilization: Allowing Frankenstein to Teach Itself." With Ron Broglio. Georgia Tech, November, 2000.
• "Ilya Prigogine's 'Order Out of Chaos' and Blake's Coherently Fragmented Cosmology in The Four Zoas." American Conference on Romanticism, University of California at Santa Barbara, October, 1998.
• "Science Fiction and the Marketplace" Invited lecture. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, January, 1998.
• Over three hundred radio scripts for A Moment of Science radio program.
• Co-author of a general interest science book, How Can You Tell if a Spider is Dead?, Indiana University Press, 1996.

My science fiction stories have also appeared in national markets:

• "Asphalt Moves."  Pirate Writings 17 (1999), 22-28.
• "Fall of the House of Value." Reprinted in The Best of Pirate Writings. Ed. Edward J. McFadden. Padwolf Publishing, 1998.
• "Walt Whitman and the 65,536 Colors."  Terra Incognita 3 (Summer, 1998), 63-69.
• "Fall of the House of Value." Pirate Writings 16 (Summer, 1998), 14-19.
• "Flat Emily."  Tomorrow Speculative Fiction (1998), un-paginated (online subscription).
• "The Meek." Pirate Writings 11 (Fall, 1996), 20-27.
• "Jukebox City."  Terra Incognita 1 (Winter, 1996/7), 16-20.

Teaching Interests:

British and American Romanticism, 19th and 20th century British literature, the Gothic, cultural studies of "monsters", cultural studies of science, advertising culture and the construction of the consumer, science writing, science fiction, technical communication, professional writing, creative writing.

Research Interests:

Romanticism, cultural studies, cultural studies of science, population, electronic pedagogy.