Craig Smith
As a young man, Craig Smith worked on the editorial staff of The New Yorker, while moonlighting with the gay and queer press, including The New York Native and Christopher Street, and as a night watchman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His philosophy of teaching starts from the premise that we can never fully know another person, because each person is infinite. We are here in this life for a short time, to connect with one another through empathy. The vocation of the teacher is to provide students with ways of exploring their own infinity, and to do so kindly, gently, and without presumption. He has been teaching for the Department of English since 1998.
Research interest(s)/area of expertise
LGBTQIA2+ and BIPOC literature and queer theory, animal studies and anthropomorphism, the intersections of poetry and cinema, originality and intertextuality
Education
- Ph.D. in English, Wayne State University (2003). Dissertation: Eustace Tilley's Closet: Gay and Lesbian Writers at The New Yorker
- B.A. in English, University of Michigan (1984). Thesis: Learning to Read Dreamingly: The Illumination of William Blake
Awards and grants
WSU Thompkins Awards for "The Pansy Craze" (play, 2000) and "Friends of Dorothy: Gay Reinscriptions of Oz in Geoff Ryman and Ethan Mordden" (essay, 2001)
Selected publications
"Across the Widest Gulf: Non-Human Subjectivity in Virginia Woolf's 'Flush.'" Twentieth-Century Literature, 48.3 (Fall, 2002)
Fiction in Christopher Street (1989-90): "Praying Hands," "Sleeping with Married Men," "The Family," "Look at You," "Narcissus Was a Sad Boy"
Prose: "The Abduction" in Discontents, ed. Dennis Cooper. New York: Amethyst, 1992
Poetry: "My Father Takes Me to Sunday Horror Movie Matinees,1967-71" in RAG, ed. Johnny Ray Huston. San Francisco, 2018