Caleb D. Spencer, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of English
Video Introduction
Caleb D. Spencer, PhD, works at the intersections of literature, literary theory, cultural studies, and theology, focusing his research upon late Modernism through the contemporary. He has taught broadly in literary studies (British and American, as well as European literature in translation), literary theory, anglophone and world literature, and critical theory. He has published critical essays in the Journal of the Religion and Popular Culture and Christianity and Literature. He is very interested in modernist poetry, especially the English and American poet W.H. Auden. Spencer has published art criticism on contemporary sculpture and photography, in addition to having taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 10 years. He is currently finishing a book project entitled Protestant Postmodernism: Theory and Theology, Affect and Art, which demonstrates various structural resonances between modernism in theology and postmodernism in art, literature, and popular culture, most centrally in the emphasis upon experience in all three. His current book project, tentatively titled The Better Story: Memory, Aesthetics, Truth, looks at the problems of memory in contemporary fiction, memoirs and film, especially as it relates to fiction (and the fictionalizing of memoir) and the problem of truth. Spencer is a Harvey Fellow.
Education
- PhD in English and American Studies, University of Illinois, Chicago, 2011
- MA in English and American Studies, University of Illinois, Chicago, 2002
- BA in English, Wheaton College, 1999
Academic Area
- Honors College
- School of Humanities and Sciences
Expertise
- Postmodern Theory and Theology
- Contemporary Culture
- American and British Fiction and Poetry
- Academic Writing and Writing Pedagogy
- 20th Century American and British Literature
Courses Taught
- ENGL 110 – Freshman Writing Seminar
- ENGL 111 – Introduction to Literature
- ENGL 311 – Film and Literature
- ENGL 410 – American Novel