Dr. Shawn Thomson
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Department of Literatures and Cultural Studies
Email: [email protected]
EDUCATION
PhD, University of Kansas, 2006
Major: English
Dissertation Title: The Fortress of American Solitude: Robinson Crusoe as a Topos of
Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (1846-85)"
MA, University of Missouri - Columbia, 1992
Major: English
BA, Oberlin College, 1989
Major: English
EMPLOYMENT
Assistant Professor of English, University of Texas-Pan American (August 2006)
Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Kansas (August 1, 2000 - August 31, 2006)
English Teacher, Lincoln University - Jesserson Ciy, Missouri (August 1993 - May 2000)
Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Missouri (August 1990 - July 1993)
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Shawn Thomson. Fortress of American Solitude: Robinson Crusoe in Antebellum Culture. New
Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009.
Shawn Thomson. The Romantic Architecture of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Fairleigh Dickinson
Press, 2001.
Shawn Thomson. Division and Imagined Unity in the American Renaissance: The Seamless Whole.
Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
Book Chapters
Shawn Thomson. "Lady Castaways in the Gilded Age in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth."
Storms on Islands: Shipwreck and Island Motifs in Literature and the Arts. Brigitte Le Juez and Olga
Springer (Ed.) Rodopi, 2014: 221-231.
Generated on Jun 17, 2017
Page 1 of 5
Springer (Ed.) Rodopi, 2014: 221-231.
Shawn Thomson. "Robinson Crusoe and the Shaping of Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century
America." Gender Transformations and the Expanding Vision of Nineteenth-Century American.
Monika Elbert (Ed.) Routledge, 2008:
Shawn Thomson. "British Romanticism." Herman Melville in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press,
Journal Articles
Shawn Thomson. Making Happiness in West Egg and Simburbia: An Inquiry into Consumption in
The Great Gatsby and The Sims. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture. 5, no.
Supplement (December 2005): NP.
Other
Shawn Thomson. Review of Defoe’s America by Dennis Todd. Eighteenth-Century Fiction . 25, no.
1 (June 2012): 3.
Shawn Thomson. Endnotes. Susan Harris (Ed.) Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Penguin. (June 2005)
Under Submission
Book Chapters
Shawn Thomson. British Romanticism. Herman Melville in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
AWARDS AND HONORS
Research assistant to Hall Center Distinguished Professor Susan Harris. (2004)
Recipient, William Albrecht Memorial Scholarship (2003)
PRESENTATIONS
Shawn Thomson. "The Holy Tunic and Signs of the Pilgrimage to Treves in Hawthorne’s The
Scarlet Letter," South Central/Modern Languages Association , SCMLA, Nashville, TN. (October
2015)
Shawn Thomson. "The Team-Based Learning Approach to Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima." National
Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco, Houston, TX. (February 2015)
Shawn Thomson. "Whitman atop the Latting Observatory," South Central/Modern Languages
Association Conference, SCMLA, Austin, TX. (October 2014)
Shawn Thomson. "Hawthorne’s ‘Sights from a Steeple’ as a Blueprint for Howells’s A Hazard of
New Fortunes," South Central/Modern Languages Association Conference, SCMLA, New Orleans,
LA. (October 2013)
Shawn Thomson. "Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ and the Fugitive Road Trip from
Wall Street to Manhatta," American Society of Literature and the Environment, ASLE, Lawrence,
KS. (August 2013)
Shawn Thomson. "Plutarch’s Sonnets on the Sidewalk of New York: Literary Nationalism and the
Poetry of George Washington Peck, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitma," Melville Society
Generated on Jun 17, 2017
Page 2 of 5
International Conference, Melville Society , Washington D.C.. (August 2013)
Shawn Thomson. "‘Startling Experiments in Electricity, Electro-Magnetism and Galvanism’:
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and the Religious Spectacle," South Central/Modern Languages
Association , SCMLA, San Antonio, TX. (October 2012)
Shawn Thomson. "Fictional Fictions of Antebellum New York: Recovering John S. Sauzade’s The
Spuytenduyvel Chronicle (1856)," Society for Textual Scholarship, STS, Austin, TX. (June 2012)
Shawn Thomson. "Seams and Seamlessness: Literary Nationalism in Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick," American Literature Association Conference, ALA, Boston, MA. (May 2011)
Shawn Thomson. "The Fearful Castaway in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth." Society for
Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery (SISSI), Colorado Springs, CO. (March 2010)
Shawn Thomson. "Shipwreck and Male Sympathy in ‘Life in the Iron Mills." M/MLA Conference,
Cleveland, OH. (November 2007)
Shawn Thomson. "An American Woman Castaway in Buffalo Dress, Shoes, Gloves, and Hat," 16th
Annual Cultural Studies Conference, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS. (March 2007)
Shawn Thomson. "Playing Crusoe on Jackson Island: A Return to the Trope of the Crusoe-Friday
Friendship in the Face of the Failed Reconstruction in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn ." M/MLA Conference, Chicago, IL. (November 2006)
Shawn Thomson. "The Illustrated Robinson Crusoe and Its Meaning to the Maturation of Boys in
Nineteenth-Century America." M/MLA Conference, Chicago, IL. (November 2006)
Shawn Thomson. "Herman Melville’s Pierre and the Trope of the Moral and Social Castaway in
Nineteenth-Century America." Kansas State University Cultural Studies Conference, Manhattan, KS.
(March 2006)
Shawn Thomson. "Crusoe Comforts: Exploring the Intertexuality of Robinson Crusoe in Elizabeth
Stoddard’s Two Men." M/MLA Conference, Milwaukee, WI. (November 2005)
Shawn Thomson. "Reconfiguring the Crusoe Story: Castaways as Figures of Masculinity in
Douglass's Narrative and Melville's Typee," The Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville
Conference, Melville Society, New Bedford, MA. (June 2005)
Shawn Thomson. "Kent Haruf’s Plainsong," University of Kansas, (October 2004)
Shawn Thomson. "Seams and Seamlessness: American Indian Imaginings of a World of Science and
Belief," Creating Communities: American Studies, Indigenous Nations Studies, and First Nations
Peoples, Mid-America American Studies Association , Lawrence, KS. (April 2004)
Shawn Thomson. "Caught Between High Plains Drifter and High School History Teacher: Contested
Identities in Kent Haruf’s Plainsong." New Literacies Conference, Lawrence, KS. (March 2004)
Shawn Thomson. "New Identities of the West Panel Organizer." New Literacies Conference,
Lawrence, KS. (March 2004)
Shawn Thomson. "The Happiness Game in West Egg and Simburbia: An Inquiry into the Fitness
Landscapes of The Great Gatsby and The Sims." The Society for Literature and Science, Austin, TX.
(October 2003)
Shawn Thomson. "Walking in the Maze: An Investigation of the Relational Consciousness in W.G.
Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn ," 12th Annual Cultural Studies Symposium, Kansas State University,
Manhattan, KS. (March 2003)
Generated on Jun 17, 2017
Page 3 of 5
Shawn Thomson. "through bogs and briers': Walks of Resistance in Douglass's Narrative of the Life
of Fredrick Douglass and Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." American Literature
Association, Cambridge, MA. (May 2001)
Shawn Thomson. "The Marble Steeple: The Word-Image and Ahab’s Passionate Idealism in
Moby-Dick." English Graduate Student Association Conference, Columbia, MO. (October 1998)
TEACHING
Courses Taught
19C American Literature
19th Cent Am Lit
Adv Topics Lit & Cultural Stud
Am. Renaissance&Mythic Origins
Composition
Film Theory
Humanities-Honors
Intro Literary Studies
Intro to Am Lit
Intro to American Lit
Intro to Literature
Rhetoric & Composition II
Rhetoric & Composition I
Studies in Amer Lit
Studies in American Lit
Studies in Ethnic Lit
Studies in Single Author
Survey of Am Lit
Survey of Am Lit I
Thesis
SERVICE
University Service
Chairperson, ENG 2300 Literature Subcommittee. (2008 - 2009)
Other, Faculty Development Council. (2007 - 2009)
Committee Member, Graduate Exam Committee. (2007 - 2008)
Generated on Jun 17, 2017
Page 4 of 5
Committee Chair, Library Committee. (2007 - 2008)
Chairperson, Student Association of Graduates in English Teaching Resource Committee. (2002 2004)
Other, Student Association of Graduates in English. (2002 - 2004)
Generated on Jun 17, 2017
Page 5 of 5