Dr. Robert Petersen
Professor

Member, Graduate Faculty

Office: PH 339; Phone/Voice Mail: 898-2589

Dr. Petersen teaches courses in Modern literature, modern poetry, and composition. He is the winner of the 2001-2002 MTSU Teacher of the Year Award; Outstanding Advisor, College of Liberal Arts, 1999-2000; and is listed in Who's Who Among American Teachers, 2003-2004 edition. Dr. Petersen is the Scheduling Coordinator, English Department, 2004-2008.

See Publications

Reviews in Commercial Publications

• Review of Marjorie Dorner’s Nightmare. The Tennessean 11 October 1987: 7F.
• Review of Mark Lucas’s The Southern Vision of Andrew Lytle. The Tennessean 5 July 1987: 7F
• Review of David R. Slavitt’s The Hussar. The Tennessean 21 June 1987: 9F.
• Review of Rosemary Kingsland’s Cassata. The Tennessean 31 May 1987: 9F.
• Review of Reginald Gibbon’s The Writer in the World. The Tennessean 23 November 1986: 15F.
• Review of Robert D. Richardson’s Henry David Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. The Tennessean 16 November 1986: 11F.
• Review of Lane Dunlop’s A Late Chrysanthemum: Twenty-One Stories from the Japanese. The Tennessean 12 October 1986: 9F.
• Review of Samuel Chase Coale’s In Hawthorne’s Shadow: American Romance from Melville to Mailer. The Tennessean 17 August 1986: 9F.
• Review of C. Ralph Stephens’ The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys. The Tennessean 3 August 1986: 9F.
• Review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World. The Tennessean 20 July 1986: 9F.
• Review of D. A. Callard’s "Pretty Good for a Woman": The Enigmas of Evelyn Scott. The Tennessean 16 March 1986: 11F.

Poetry

• "Evocation of Woman in Humid Weather." Prologue 4.1 (1970): 29.
• "Image." The American Poet October-December 1967: 33.

Conference Papers and Lectures

• "A Portrait of the Artist as Pitchman: George Moore's Confessions of a Young Man." Victorians Institute Conference.  Converse College, Spartanburg, SC. October 16, 2009.
• "Joy Kogawa's Naomi's Road: Suffer the Little Children." 8th Biennial Conference on Modern Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. Middle Tennessee State University, Nashville, TN. March 28, 2009.
• "Gender Construction and Deconstruction in Walter de la Mare's Memoirs of a Midget." 37th Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900. University of Louisville. Louisville, KY. February 20, 2009.
• "Batman in Genderland" The Superhero as Feminine Other in Paul Dini's The Wonderland Gang." South Atlantic Modern Language Association. University of Louisville, Louisville, KY. November 7. 2008.
• "Elizabeth Strickland's Life of Mary II (1848); Rereading the Glorious Revolution from the Perspective of a Victorian Woman Historian." Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States. University of Washington, Seattle, WA. October 3, 2008.
• "George Eliot's Seaside Holidays: Tourism with a Scientific Twist." Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States. University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, Colorado. October 26, 2007.
• "Performing Gender in the Natural Sciences: Female ‘Scientists’ in Short Stories by Andrea Barrett." Women’s Studies Interdisciplinary Conference: Performing Gender. Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN. February 24, 2007.
• "Philip Henry Gosse's Tenby: A Seaside Holiday (1856): Nature Writing as a Chapter in Victorian England's Struggle with Science." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association. University of California, Riverside, CA. November 10, 2006.
• "Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett." Bookends--2006 Summer Lecture
  Series. Linebaugh Public Library, Mufreesboro, TN. July 26, 2006.
• "Yellow, Blue, and Red: An Examination of the Psychological Significance of Color in
  D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love." 20th Century Literature & Culture Conference.
  University of Louisville, Louisville, Ky. February 23-25, 2006.
• "The Mid-Victorian Aquarium Craze: Hoarding, Sharing, and Displaying Creatures Plundered from the Coastal Beaches of Great Britain." North American Victorian Studies Association. University of Virginia, Charlottesville. September 30-October 2, 2005.
• "Reading a Readerly Text in a Writerly Fashion: The Case of F. D.Davison’s The Red Heifer—A Study of Men and Cattle (1931)." The Sixth Annual Conference of Modern Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature. Middle Tennessee State University. Nashville. March 31-April 2, 2005.
• “The Victorian Aquarium: Scientific Tool, Popular Entertainment, and Home Decoration.” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States: Victorian Innovations. University of Washington. Seattle. October 21-23, 2004.
• “Cassandra Envisions Apocalypse: The Prophetic Woman in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Amalgamemnon.” South Central Conference on Christianity and Literature—Images of the Sacred: Myth, Folklore, and Symbol. Xavier University of New Orleans. New Orleans. January 23-24, 2004.
• “Philip Henry Gosse and Edmund Gosse: The Legacy of Victorian Science in the Tidal Pools of England.” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States. University of Texas, Austin, Texas. October 9, 2003.
• “Partnerships in Research: Journals Edited in MTSU’s Department of English.” Poster presentation. Faculty Research Showcase, Middle Tennessee State University, May 2, 2003.
• “Writing Revolution in History: Agnes Strickland’s Life of Mary Beatrice of Modena.” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States. Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, October 11, 2002.
• “Kawabata Yasunari’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories: Blindness and the Mirror World of Transcendent Love.” Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast. Regional Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. Western Washington University, Bellingham, June 23, 2002.
• “Books About War, to be Read by Men: Reconstructing the American Civil War in Novels by Stark Young, William Faulkner, and Shelby Foote.” Third Annual Faculty Research Symposium. Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, April 25, 2002.
• “Kyoko Mori’s The Dream of Water (1995): The Missing Mother, Missing the Mother, Mothering Self.” Tennessee Philological Association. Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, February 22, 2002.
• “Assuming the Male Gaze: The Princess Kazunomiya Episode in Kawabata Yasunari’s Beauty and Sadness.” Southeast Conference, Association for Asian Studies. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, January 19, 2002.
• "Snapshots from the Past: Time and Memory in Kyoko Mori’s Shizuko’s Daughter." Fourth Biennial Conference on Modern Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature, Middle Tennessee State University, Nashville, TN, April 5, 200l.
• "Kurt Cobain Meets Lady Murasaki: Reaffirmation of Japanese Cultural Identity in Banana Yoshimoto’s Lizard." New York Conference on Asian Studies, College of St. Rose, Albany, NY, October 21, 2000.
• "Gender, Artistic Creation and Self: Women as Artists in Yasunari Kawabata’s Beauty and Sadness." New England Conference on Asian Studies, Brown University, Providence, RI, September 30, 2000.
• "Centering the Periphery, Peripherializing the Center: Agnes Strickland’s Life of Catharine of Braganza (1846) as Historical Re-Vision." Centers and Peripheries: Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference, Yale University, New Haven, April 8, 2000.
• "From Child to Adult"—The Process of Gender Construction in Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Bridge of Dreams." Southeast Conference, Association for Asian Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC, January 15, 2000.
• "A Bible for the Millennium: From a New Genesis to a New Apocalypse in L. P. Hartley’s Facial Justice." Mideast Conference on Christianity and Literature, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, October 23, 1999.
• "Speaking her ‘side-track mind’": Female as Prophet in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Amalgamemnon (1984)." Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Dallas Baptist University, Dallas, TX, October 3, 1999.
• "Intertextuality in Banana Yoshimoto’s Lizard: Contemporary Urban Versions of Traditional Japanese Folk Materials." Tennessee Philological Society, Lambuth University, Jackson, TN February 26, 1999.
• "Twentieth Century Japanese Fiction by Women: The Case of Fumiko Enchi’s Masks (1958)." Book Circle, Murfreesboro Women’s Club, Murfreesboro, TN, March 17, 1998.
• "Cross Cultural Influences in Meiji Japan: Writers Dealing with the Westernization of Fiction." Presentation for Art 489 (Professor Janet Higgins), Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, November 5, 1998 and October 28, 1997.
• "Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction: The Canon Under Fire in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Textermination (1991)." Tennessee Philological Association, Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN, February 27, 1998.
• "Agnes Strickland as Victorian Historian: The Rhetoric of Gender and Genre in her Life of Mary Beatrice of Modena (1846)." Sixth Annual Conference on 18^th and 19^th Century British Women Writes, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA, March 29, 1997.
• "Hyper-Bodies: The Process of Gender Construction in Tanizaki Junichiro’s The Bridge of Dreams (1959)." Middle Tennessee State University’s Women and Power Conference, Murfreesboro, TN, February 22, 1997.
• "’An Ordinary Sinner’: Christian Moral Development in L. P. Hartley’s The Boat." Tennessee Philological Association, Nashville, TN, April 1996.
• "Kenzaburo Oe: A Nobel Laureate’s View of a Changing Japan." Tennessee Asian Studies Association, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, April 1995.
• "A Bakhtinian Reading of Through the Looking Glass (1871): Lewis Carroll’s ChronotopicTreatment of a Game of Chess." Conference on Modern Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature, Middle Tennessee State University, Nashville, TN, March 1995.
• with Jacquelyn Jackson. "War, Race, and Social Change: Two Perspectives on the Fiction of Stark Young." Natchez Literary Festival, Natchez, MS, June 1994.
• "The Self-Contradicting Woman in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The House of Cedars: Passing in Late Nineteenth Century America." Tennessee Philological Association, Jefferson City, TN, February 1994.
• "Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Muse: A Redefinition of Traditional Aesthetic Power Relationships in Nick Bantock’s Griffin and Sabine and Sabine’s Notebook." Western Kentucky University’s Women’s Studies Conference, Bowling Green, KY, October 1993.
• "’Behind the Smokehouse that Summer": Concepts of History and Time in Shelby Foote’s Shiloh, Stark Young’s So Red the Rose, and William Faulkner’s The Unvanquished." Tennessee Philological Association, Jefferson City, TN, February 26, 1993.
• "Student. Wife, and Lover: Treatments of Japanese Women in Tayama Katai’s Futon (1907)." Sixth Annual Women’s Studies Conference, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, September 25, 1992.
• "Unconscious Memory and Biological Variation: Samuel Butler’s Ernest Pontifex, or The Way of All Flesh (1903) as Reponse to Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution." Kentucky State University’s Third Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Science, Technology, and Religious Ideas, Frankfort, KY, April 2, 1992.
• "Master and Servant: Class, Caste and Moral Redemption in L. P. Hartley’s The Harness Room." Tennessee Philological Association, Nashville, TN, February 29, 1992.
• "On the Road Again: Lesley Downer’s Journey into a Lost Japan." Book Circle, Murfreesboro Women’s Club, October 17, 1991.
• "Autonomy and Creativity: Japanese Feminist Writers and the Liberation of Women, 1910-1940." Western Kentucky University’s Fifth Annual Women’s Studies Conference, Bowling Green, KY, September 26, 1991.
• "Through a Child’s Eyes: Fiction of the Holocaust by Jona Oberski and Reuben Berkovitch." MTSU's Understanding the Holocaust: Fact, Fiction, Fallacy, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, April 11, 1991.
• "Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate: Modern Love in the Bay Area." Literature and Film Conference, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, February 1991.
• "To Begin at the Beginning: ‘Tis the Voice of Alice, I heard Him Declare." Tennessee Philological Association, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, February 24, 1990.
• "History Reconstructed: Narrative Models of the American Civil War in Fiction by Shelby Foote, Stark Young, and William Faulkner." Literature and Film in the Historical Dimension, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, February 3, 1990.
• "Snapshots of the Pleasure Quarter: Perspectives on the Floating World in Japanese Fiction." Western Kentucky University’s Second Women’s Studies Conference, Bowling Green, KY, September 30, 1988.
• "The Civil War as Marxist Dialectic in Evelyn Scott’s The Wave. Special Session—Fiction Reconstructs the American Civil War, College English Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, LA, April 16, 1988.
• "The Way of the Artist: Bridging the Gender Gap in the Fiction of Yasunari Kawabata." Western Kentucky University’s Women’s Studies Conference, Bowling Green, KY, October 30, 1987.
• "Lesser Breeds Without the Law: Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy." Tennessee Philological Association, Nashville, TN, February 21, 1986.
• "Type and Antitype—The Archetype of the Hero in Caroline Gordon’s The Glory of Hera." A Hometown Symposium: Evelyn Scott and Caroline Gordon, Clarksville, TN, November 9, 1985.
• "I, Mask, Eye: Concepts of Self in Twentieth-Century Japanese Fiction." The Literary Forum, Manchester, TN, September 15, 1984.
• "The Art of Historical Reconstruction" The American Civil War in Novels by Shelby Foote, Stark Young, and William Faulkner. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, Natchez Chapter, Natchez, MS, February 14, 1984.
• History in Fiction: The Representation of Historical Consciousness." Special Session—The American Civil War in Fiction: The Rhetoric of Historical Reconstruction, MLA Convention, New York, December 30, 1983.
• "The Word Beyond Speech--Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil." South Central Meeting, Conference on Christianity and Literature, New Orleans, LA, October 7, 1983.
• "Problems with Parallelism: An Analysis of Student Errors." Panel—Assessing Performance Errors Composition: Achieving Insight for Impact on Pedagogical Strategies, CCC, Detroit, MI, March 18, 1983.
• "An Elegy on Fate—Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil. Special Session—Christianity and Paganism,: Historical Novels by Walter Pater, Hermann Broch, and Wolfgang Cordan, MLA, Los Angeles, CA, December 29, 1982.
• "The Prospect for Redemption in L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between." Rocky Mountain Conference on British Studies, Reno, NV, November 7, 1981.
• "A Transformed Life—L. P. Hartley’s Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy." Midwest Meeting of the Conference on Christianity and Literature, Chicago, IL: April 25, 1981.
• "The Balkan Trilogy of Olivia Manning." Twentieth Century Women Writers, SUNY College at Brockport, July 1980.