Dr. Joseph Pizza

Associate Professor, Director,

English

KNOWN FOR: Teaching courses including Transatlantic Modernism, Contemporary Poetry, African American Literature and Rhetoric and Writing.

When not in the classroom, can often be found: Researching modern and contemporary poetics and jazz.

Popular quote: “You can be the music.” – Amiri Baraka

Publications:

“Continental Drift: Charles Olson and The English Intelligencer,” Contemporary Literature vol. 59, no. 3 2019, pp. 277-307.
“All That Is Lovely in Jazz: The Creeley-Rice Collaboration for Jargon 10,” Journal of Black Mountain College Studies 9 (2019)
“Nathaniel Mackey,” Scribner’s American Writers, ed. Jay Parini, vol. 27, 2017
“Performance, Improvisation, and Seriality in the Poetry of Nathaniel Mackey,” currently under consideration at Callaloo
“Continental Drift: Charles Olson and the English Intelligencer,” forthcoming in Contemporary Literature

Presentations:

2018 “Black Mountain Blues: Charles Olson, Amiri Baraka, and Jazz,” presented at the annual ReVIEWING Black Mountain international conference in Asheville, NC
2018 “Serial Improvisation in the First-Year Writing Classroom,” given at the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication’s regional convention at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA
2017 “Seriality and Improvisation in the Fiction of Nathaniel Mackey” to be presented as part of the “Music and Modern Fiction” panel at the annual South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention in Atlanta, GA in November
2017 “Black Mountain and Jazz: Creeley, Olson, and ‘Open Field Poetics,’” given at the annual Reviewing Black Mountain Conference in Asheville, NC
2015 “‘Moment’s Notice’: Nathaniel Mackey and Jazz,” presented as part of the Jazz and Modernism Panel at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention in Durham, NC