Dr Stephen Ross
- Associate Professor, English
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Sign in to editResearch areas: Poetry and poetics, modernism, comparative literature
Contact information
Biography
I am an associate professor in the Department of English. I was co-editor of the peer-review journal Modernism/modernity from 2021-25, publishing sixteen print editions of the journal in that time and co-editing the digital Print Plus platform. I supervise graduate work at the MA and PhD levels in the fields of poetry/poetics, modernism, and 20th/21st century literature.
As a comparatist scholar of modern and contemporary literature, my work centers on poetry/poetics and international modernism. My current book project, Centuries Surround Me With Fire: On Celan and Mandelstam, is a study of the poets Paul Celan (1920-1970) and Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938). The project will be four chapters divided into two parts: 1) philological excavations of Celan's translational "encounter" with Mandelstam in the late 1950s/early 1960s 2) zoomed-out readings of Celan's work in broader Cold-War contexts involving the USSR, Algeria, and Israel/Palestine (thus also tracking the crucial linguistic domains of Russian, French, and Hebrew in his work). I am interested in how Celan uses translation of Russian poetry into German to think about historical singularity and repetition. I attend to this question at very small and very large scales, so that the project both drives to the core of Celan's poetics while also advancing new readings of his work in relation to the Soviet Thaw, decolonial struggles of the mid-century, and his late Zionism.
Here is a link to a talk I gave on Celan and Mandelstam at the "Untimely Imagination" conference in Zagreb, June 2023 (this material will be part of chapter one).
In the longer term, I'm working on a project tentatively titled The Poetics of Global Modernism: Caribbean, Arab World, Jewish Diaspora. This project would be a multilingual comparatist study of how modernist poetries of the so-called “periphery” and “semi-periphery,” unlike “core” metropolitan European and North American modernisms, are mediated and even produced by state power. I will apply this theoretical framework to readings of figures such as Aimé Césaire, Kamau Brathwaite, Nathaniel Mackey, Abdellatif Laâbi, Edmond Jabès, Joyce Mansour, Mikhl Likht, Debora Vogel, and Avot Yeshurun.
My first monograph, Invisible Terrain: John Ashbery and the Aesthetics of Nature (OUP, 2017), examines the poetry of John Ashbery in relation to the avant-garde fantasy that nature can become art. I am also co-editor of Global Modernists on Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2020), a 500-page anthology that won the Modernist Studies Association's 2021 book prize for Edition, Anthology, or Essay Collection. This anthology gathers programmatic statements by modernist artists that reflect on the theory and practice of modernism in its various global formations. With Ariel Resnikoff I am working toward the first complete translation and critical edition of Processions, the long-poem masterpiece of Yiddish American modernist Mikhl Likht (1893-1953).
I am also interested in critical theory, translation theory, and psychoanalysis, and draw on them constantly in my research and teaching. And if I had to do it all over again, I might have become a classicist.
AI has been unleashed on us by bad actors without our consent. In this sense, it is no different than any other disruptive technology of capitalist modernity. But it also poses a distinct and unprecedented risk to the work I do and that I hope my students will be able to do. I find no use for it in my classroom nor in my research, and I am bewildered by the discourse of "inevitability" that tiresomely attends debates about the topic.
In the longer term, I'm working on a project tentatively titled The Poetics of Global Modernism: Caribbean, Arab World, Jewish Diaspora. This project would be a multilingual comparatist study of how modernist poetries of the so-called “periphery” and “semi-periphery,” unlike “core” metropolitan European and North American modernisms, are mediated and even produced by state power. I will apply this theoretical framework to readings of figures such as Aimé Césaire, Kamau Brathwaite, Nathaniel Mackey, Abdellatif Laâbi, Edmond Jabès, Joyce Mansour, Mikhl Likht, Debora Vogel, and Avot Yeshurun.
My first monograph, Invisible Terrain: John Ashbery and the Aesthetics of Nature (OUP, 2017), examines the poetry of John Ashbery in relation to the avant-garde fantasy that nature can become art. I am also co-editor of Global Modernists on Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2020), a 500-page anthology that won the Modernist Studies Association's 2021 book prize for Edition, Anthology, or Essay Collection. This anthology gathers programmatic statements by modernist artists that reflect on the theory and practice of modernism in its various global formations. With Ariel Resnikoff I am working toward the first complete translation and critical edition of Processions, the long-poem masterpiece of Yiddish American modernist Mikhl Likht (1893-1953).
I am also interested in critical theory, translation theory, and psychoanalysis, and draw on them constantly in my research and teaching. And if I had to do it all over again, I might have become a classicist.
AI has been unleashed on us by bad actors without our consent. In this sense, it is no different than any other disruptive technology of capitalist modernity. But it also poses a distinct and unprecedented risk to the work I do and that I hope my students will be able to do. I find no use for it in my classroom nor in my research, and I am bewildered by the discourse of "inevitability" that tiresomely attends debates about the topic.
Ph.D. University of Oxford (2013)
M.St. University of Oxford (2009)
B.A. UNC Chapel Hill (2007)
Teaching activities
Concordia Teaching:
Fall 2026
ENGL 237 - Tragedy
ENGL 800 - Theories and Methods
Winter 2026
ENGL 237 - Tragedy
ENGL 800 - Theories and Methods
Winter 2026
ENGL 237 - Tragedy
ENGL 633 - The New American Poetry
Fall 2025
ENGL 447 - Literature and Psychoanalysis
Winter 2025
ENGL 627 - Late Modernist Poetry and WWII
Fall 2024
ENGL 398- Afrofuturism
Summer 2024
ENGL 234 - Poetry
Winter 2024
ENGL 394 - Contemporary Critical Theory
Fall 2023
ENGL 262 - British Literature 1660-1900
ENGL 603/801 - Poet's Prose
Fall 2022
LBCL 490 - Twentieth Century: Forms, Themes, Critiques
Summer 2022
ENGL 602 - Dante and Modern Literature
Winter 2022
ENGL 394 - Contemporary Critical Theory
ENGL 470 - New American Poetry
Fall 2021
ENGL 604 - Global Modernist Poetics: Caribbean, Ashkenazi Jewish Diaspora, Arab World
Winter 2021
ENGL 262 - British Literature 1660-1900
Fall/Winter 2020-21
ENGL 340 - Modernism
Fall 2020
ENGL 628 - The New American Poetry
Winter 2020
ENGL 262 - British Literature 1660-1900
ENGL 603/801 - Poet's Prose
Fall 2022
LBCL 490 - Twentieth Century: Forms, Themes, Critiques
Summer 2022
ENGL 602 - Dante and Modern Literature
Winter 2022
ENGL 394 - Contemporary Critical Theory
ENGL 470 - New American Poetry
Fall 2021
ENGL 604 - Global Modernist Poetics: Caribbean, Ashkenazi Jewish Diaspora, Arab World
Winter 2021
ENGL 262 - British Literature 1660-1900
Fall/Winter 2020-21
ENGL 340 - Modernism
Fall 2020
ENGL 628 - The New American Poetry
Winter 2020
ENGL 367 - American Poetry
ENGL 628 - Global Modernism
Fall 2019
ENGL 338 - Modern British Literature
ENGL 365 - American Literature, 1950 - present
ENGL 394 - Contemporary Critical Theory
ENGL 470 - Afrofuturism
Fall 2018
ENGL 349 - Modern Poetry
ENGL 626 - Afrofuturism
Winter 2018
ENGL 341 - Modern Fiction
ENGL 386 - Caribbean Literature
Fall 2017
ENGL 628 - Global Britain
Winter 2017
ENGL 345 - Modern Drama
ENGL 340 - Modernism II (yearlong)
ENGL 394 - Contemporary Critical Theory
Fall 2016
ENGL 262 - British Literature 1660-1900
ENGL 246 - Science Fiction
ENGL 340 - Modernism I (yearlong)
Publications
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