Barrett Watten

Barrett Watten

Barrett Watten is Professor of English at Wayne State University. He is the author of The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (2004 René Wellek Prize, ACLA) and Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences (University of Iowa Press, 2016), as well as numerous volumes of poetry, including Frame (1971-1990), Bad History, Progress/Under Erasure, and Zone (1973–2021). With Carrie Noland, he co-edited Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement (Palgrave, 2008); and with Lyn Hejinian, he is coeditor of A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982-98 and Poetics Journal Digital Archive (Wesleyan University Press, 2013/15). In 2022–23, he produced Grand Piano TV, a ten-part online reading series with the ten authors of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975–1980 (available at bit.ly/3S7f7ae).

Research interest(s)/area of expertise

20th/21st century literature; modernist and avant-garde studies; postmodern and millennial literature and culture; poetry and poetics; visual culture; digital culture. 

Education

Awards and grants

• Academy of Scholars, Wayne State University, 2014
• Millay Colony Residency (Austerlitz, N.Y.), August 2010
• Fulbright Senior Fellowship, Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen, Germany, Fall 2005
• The René Wellek Prize, American Comparative Literature Association, 2004
• Fellowship in Creative Writing, National Endowment for the Arts, 1979–80

Selected publications

Literary and cultural criticism

• Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016)
• The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
• Total Syntax (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985)

Edited volumes

• Poetics Journal Digital Archive, digital archive of Poetics Journal (1982-98), co-edited with Lyn Hejinian (Wesleyan University Press, 2015)
• A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–98, ed. with Lyn Hejinian (Wesleyan University Press, 2013)
• Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement, ed. with Carrie Noland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
• The Poetics of New Meaning, with introduction, Qui Parle (University of California, Berkeley) 12, no.2 (Spring/Summer 2001; appeared Fall 2001)

Creative works

• Zone (1973–2021) (Tucson: Chax Press, forthcoming 2023)
• The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975–1980, with Bob Perelman, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, and Ted Pearson, parts 1–9 (Detroit: Mode A, 2006–10)
• Progress/Under Erasure (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2004)
• Bad History (Berkeley, Calif.: Atelos Press, 1998; 2nd printing 2002)
• Frame: 1971–1990 (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997)
• Under Erasure (Tenerife, Canary Is., Spain: Zasterle Press, 1991)
• Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union. With Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, and Michael Davidson (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1991)
• Progress (New York: Roof Books, 1985)
• Complete Thought (Berkeley, Calif.: Tuumba, 1982)
• 1–10 (San Francisco: This Press, 1980)
• Plasma/Paralleles/”X” (Berkeley, Calif.: Tuumba, 1979). Extended prose poems
• Decay (San Francisco: This Press, 1977). Poetry
• Opera—Works (Bolinas, Calif.: Big Sky Books, 1975). Poetry and prose

As editor

• Poetics Journal 1–10, with Lyn Hejinian (1981–98)
• This 1–12 (1971–82; with Robert Grenier, 1971–73)

Other qualifications directly relevant to courses taught

Courses taught (last six years)

Graduate

• English 7004, Theoretical Issues in Cultural Studies, “Questions of Unreason in Modern Cultures,” Fall 2018
• English 8004, Seminar in Literature and Culture After 1870, “2049: The Present in Literature and Culture ‘After the End of History,’” Winter 2018

Upper division

• English 5450, Modern American Literature, “Modernism, Modernity, and the Ques-tion of Value,” Winter 2019
• English 5860, Topics in Creative Writing, “Creative Foundations: Contemporary Forms and Critical Practice,” Fall 2018
• English 4991/5992, Honors/Senior Seminar, “The Russian Connection,” Fall 2017

Lower division

• English 3100, Introduction to Literary Studies, Winter 2019; Winter 2018

Courses taught by Barrett Watten

Winter Term 2024 (current)

• ENG2350 - American Literature: Writing about Texts
• ENG2415 - Geopolitics and Literature: Writing about Texts

Fall Term 2023

• ENG4991 - Honors Seminar
• ENG5992 - Senior Seminar
• ENG3090 - Introduction to Cultural Studies

Winter Term 2023

• ENG3090 - Introduction to Cultural Studies