Curriculum Vitae
Specializations:
- African American and African Diaspora Literature
- American Literature and Culture
- Interdisciplinary Literary Studies (particularly economics and literature, medical humanities, and law and literature)
Research Interests:
My published scholarship explores the relationship between risk, altruism, sibling rivalry and sovereignty as that relationship emerges in works by a range of writers (including Etheridge Knight, Yusef Komunyakaa, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Jacques Derrida, and Dante) and in institutions such as the Group of 77 developing nations. I am currently working on several scholarly and creative projects that extend my exploration of the nexus between risk, altruism, sibling rivalry and sovereignty.
Honors and Awards:
- poems in The Best American Poetry 2003 and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African American Poetry
Publications:
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Collins, Michael S. Understanding Etheridge Knight. University of South Carolina Press, 2013Understanding Etheridge Knight introduces readers to a major—but understudied—American poet. Etheridge Knight (1931–1991) survived a shrapnel wound suffered during military service in Korea, as well as a drug addiction that led to an eight-year prison sentence, to publish five volumes of poetry and a small cache of powerful prose.
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Collins, Michael. The Traveling Queen. 2013“Michael Collins’s poetry rises out of the core of being and seeing—with a touch of Revelations—always arching for the ethereal alongside the earthy low, arriving at the stillpoint of Self. It takes the reader to places of witness where meaning matters; Collins’s language of muscular grace made of experience and deep dreaming crosses landscapes to help reimagine our worlds.” |
Other Publications:
- “’Ali Even Motivates the Dead’: The Pursuit of Sovereignty in Norman Mailer’s The Fight”. PMLA. 128.2 (March 2013): 322–336