Randolph-Macon College English Professor Robert Volpicelli is the author of two new articles.

“Saying Otherwise: Speech and Allegory in W.H. Auden’s WWII Lectures,” will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Textual Practice. The article, which explores how the poet W.H. Auden used his lectures on Shakespeare to provide wartime commentary in the politically tense time period of WWII, is part of Volpicelli’s current book project on author lecture tours. Volpicelli’s research for the book is supported by a Walter W. Craigie Teaching Endowment and a Rashkind Endowment Grant.

Volpicelli’s second article, “Modernist Low Vision: Visual Impairment and Weak Narrative in Conrad and Joyce,” appears in the latest issue of Novel: A Forum on Fiction. The article comes out of Volpicelli’s writing and teaching on the representations of disability in literature.

Volpicelli says, “These two essays are quite different, but it strikes me that the particular joy of working at a liberal arts college like Randolph-Macon is that the professors are encouraged to think beyond narrow academic specialties. We get to live by the same advice we give our students: to follow your intellectual curiosities.”

Robert Volpicelli
Volpicelli, who earned his B.A. from Ithaca College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University, joined the RMC faculty in 2015. His research interests include Modernism, twentieth-century American literature, studies in empire and postcolonialism, and sociological approaches to art and literature.

Volpicelli’s courses include Reading Disability in Literature & Culture; American Fiction between the Wars; American Poetry between the Wars; and The Fiction of Empire.