| | |

 

Faculty of the Department of English

 

PATRICIA ALDEN

 

 

Department of English                                                   4405 W. Franklin Street

St. Lawrence University                                                Richmond, VA 23221

Canton, New York  13617                                                               (804) 359 1327

                                                                        email: palden@.stlawu.edu                                               

 

EDUCATION     Stanford University

                             B.A.,  1967;  M.A., 1970;  Ph.D., 1979

            

TEACHING AND ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE        

 

St. Lawrence University

                        Professor, 1993 – present

                        Associate Dean for International and Intercultural Studies, 2000-2006

                        Chair, Department of English, 1995-98

            Associate Professor, 1985 -1992;

            Assistant Professor 1978-84; Instructor, 1976-78        

 

AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

 

St. Lawrence University Faculty Research Grant for two weeks of research in Zimbabwe in June 1998 to develop a chapter on land reform in Zimbabwe for Global Multiculturalism.

 

St. Lawrence University Faculty Research Grant to interview and do other research on Nuruddin Farah: May, 1996.

 

St. Lawrence University-Ford Foundation Grant: May-June, 1994, for research in Zimbabwe on literature of the liberation struggle

 

Fulbright Sub-Saharan Africa Research Grant: 1990-1991, Zimbabwe

Topic: "Reader Response and Recent Zimbabwean Literature in English"

 

N.E.H. Summer Seminar, 1989, on "African Literature and Criticism," directed by Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas

 

N.E.H. Summer Seminar, 1980, on "Sociological Approaches to Fiction," directed by Ian Watt, Stanford University

 

J. Calvin Keene Award, St. Lawrence University, 1988

     For scholarship and teaching

 

PUBLICATIONS

 

Nuruddin Farah, co-authored with Louis Tremaine  (New York: Twayne Books, 1999)

 

African Studies and the Undergraduate Curriculum, edited by Patricia Alden, D.T. Lloyd and A.I. Samatar (Lynne Rienner Press, 1994).

Publications

 

Social Mobility in the English Bildungsroman:  Gissing, Hardy, Bennett and Lawrence (UMI Research Press, 1986).

 

Forthcoming: “Coming Unstuck: Masculine Identities in Post-Independence Zimbabwe”

in a special issue of Matatu dedicated to Zimbabwean literature,  eds. Geoffrey V. Davis and Mbongeni Malaba.

 

“The Zimbabwe Constitution: Race, Land Reform and Social Justice,” co-authored with John Makumbe, in Global Multiculturalism, ed. Grant H. Cornwell and Eve W. Stoddard (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

 

“’How Can We Talk of Democracy?’ an Interview with Farah” with Louis Tremaine 

and

“New Women and Old Myths: Chinua Achebe’s Antihills of the Savannah and Nuruddin Farah’s Sardines,” (revised version of previous publication), both in Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah, edited by Derek Wright (Africa World Press, 2002).

 

“Reinventing Family in the Second Trilogy of Nuruddin Farah,” co-authored with Louis Tremaine.  World Literature Today 72, 4 (Autumn1998).

 

“Notes from the Roundtable on Teaching the African Epic,” ALA Bulletin, 23, 3 (1997).

 

"Competing Interpretations: Charles Mungoshi's `The Accident,'" Zambezia, 21, 2 (1995).

 

"New Women and Old Myths: Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and Nuruddin Farah's Sardines," in Critical Approaches to Anthills of the Savannah, edited by Holger G. Ehling (Rodopi Press: Amsterdam, 1991): 67-80.

 

Mapping the Personal and the Political: the Child-Geographer in Nuruddin Farah's Maps," in African Literature--1988: New Masks, edited by Hal Wylie, Dennis Brutus, and Juris Silenieks (Three Continents Press and The African Literature Association, 1990): 119-125.

 

CONFERENCE PAPERS

 

“’Men II Boyz’: Male Anxiety in Recent Fiction by Charles Mungoshi” at the African Literature Association (Fez, Morocco, 1999)

 

 “Secrets and the Second Trilogy of Nuruddin Farah” at the African Literature Association (Austin, 1998).

 

 

“Teaching Sundiata” at the African Literature Association (East Lansing, 1997).

 

“Shape-Shifting Fe/Males: Gender Indeterminacy and Political Resistance in the Novels of Nuruddin Farah” at the African Studies Association (San Francisco, 1996).

 

“National Divisions and New Forms of Political Fictions: Novels about the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle” at the African Studies Association (Orlando, 1995).

 

"The Changing Literature Curriculum in Zimbabwe and Kenya," at the African Literature Association (Accra, 1994).

 

"Interpretive Communities: Teaching Charles Mungoshi in New York and Zimbabwe," at the African Literature Association (Guadaloupe, 1993).

 

"A Reader-Response Approach to Charles Mungoshi's `The Accident,'" at the African Literature Association (St. Catherine's, Ontario, 1992).

 

"Teaching Achebe's Anthills" to the English Association, Harare, Zimbabwe (Feb. 1991).

 

"Farah's Trilogy: Renegotiating the Individual and the Social," at the African Literature Association (Madison, 1990).

 

"Learning to Resist: Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions," at the Modern Language Association (Washington, D. C., 1989).

 

"Political and Sexual Potency in Sardines and Anthills of the Savannah," at the African Literature Association  (Dakar, Senegal, 1989).

 

"New Women and New Myths in the Fiction of Farah and Achebe," at the African Studies Association (Chicago, 1988).

 

"Mapping the Personal and the Political:  Farah's Child-Geographer in Maps," at the African Literature Association  (Pittsburgh, 1988).

 

"Nuruddin Farah's Trilogy:  The Problematic of Patriarchy," at the African Literature Association (Cornell, 1987).

                     

"Realism, Modernism, Allegory:  J.M. Coetzee," at the Summer Institute on Culture and Society (Carnegie-Mellon, 1986).

 

REVIEWS

 

of Derek Wright, The Novels of Nuruddin Farah, in Modern Fiction Studies, 40.4 (1995)

 

of Dambudzo Marechera, Cemetery of Mind: Collected Poems in Choice, 1994.

 

of Flora Veit-Wild, Dambudzo Marechera: A Source Book on His Life and Works, in Choice, 1994.

 

of Alexander McCall Smith, Children of Wax: African Folk Tales, in Choice, Feb. 1992.

 

of Buchi Emecheta, The Family: A Novel, in Choice, 1990.

 

of Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions: A Novel in Choice, Nov. 1989.

 

 

OTHER SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES

 

Chair for the African Literature Association Committee on Teaching and Research, 1995-97.

Organized two panels for the 1996 ALA meetings and chaired panel on “African Literature, Interculturalism, and the Undergraduate Curriculum” (Stony Brook,  1996)

 

Organized a panel on “Recasting the Political Novel” for the African Studies Association (Orlando, 1995)

 

One of two coordinators for a national conference on "Teaching African Studies: New Directions in the 21st Century," held at St. Lawrence University, Oct. 2-5, 1992.

 

Discussant for a panel on "Teaching the Popol Vuh" at the Association of American Colleges annual meeting, Washington, D.C., 1992.

 

Chair, Roundtable on "Teaching African Studies in Liberal Arts Colleges: Challenges and Prospects," African Studies Association, Nov.,1989

 

Panelist for "Teaching African Studies at Liberal Arts Colleges: the St. Lawrence Experiment," New York State African Studies Association, New Paltz, Oct. 1989.

Other Scholarly Activities

 

Chair, Modern African Literature Section, Northeast MLA, 1987.

 

Chair, Marxist Literary Theory Section, Northeast MLA, 1986.

 

National Workshops and Conferences Attended

 

"The Challenge of Third World Culture," Duke University, 1987.

 

National Council of Teachers of English, Summer Conference on Challenges to the Canon: Gender and Afro-American Studies, 1988.

 

National Council of Teachers of English, Summer Conference on New Critical Theories, 1987.

 

Summer Institutes on "Culture and Society," sponsored by the Marxist Literary Group of the Modern Language Association, two weeks in June, 1981, 1982, 1986.   

 

September 2006