Bruce Boeckel, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
McDonald Hall, Room 219
559-453-7141
bruce.boeckel@fresno.edu
Education
Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1993
M.A., Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1984
B.A., German & French, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Kearney, Nebraska, 1981 - Magna Cum Laude with a Certificate in Translation
Share why you teach at FPU
Teaching at FPU gives me the opportunity to help students grow both in their knowledge of the world and in their Christian faith. I am excited about the possibilities involved in my own field, writing and literature. I want to help students develop the open sensibility and the critical thinking that are crucial to understanding literature. I believe that Christian higher education should provide training in and modelling of these intellectual virtues.
Scholarly Interests
- Comparative literature
- British, German, and French literature of the 18th and 19th centuries
- Creative writing
Publications and Presentations
- "Domestic Bliss and Tormented Chemistry: Ambivalence about Traditional Marriage in Goethe's Elective Affinities," presentation at the meeting of the West Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature, California Baptist University, Riverside, California, March 2010
- "A Tale of Two Cities: Do the Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few?" presented at a regional lecture day for Academic Decathlon, September 2009 in Madera, California, themed around the French Revolution
- "Reading Jane Eyre with Would-Be Janes: Christian Identity and Gender Identification in British Romantic and Victorian Literature," essay in The Word in the English Classroom: Best Practices of Faith Integration, edited by Jamie Dessert and Brad Gambil, published by Abilene Christian, 2009
- "Odd Man Out in an Old Girl's Network: The Male Teacher in a Female-Rich Classroom" and "Gender and Religious Diversity in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Teaching and Mentoring at Fresno Pacific University" co-presented with Elizabeth Lake, psychology faculty, at Conversations Toward Wholeness: Creating and Sustaining Climates in Which Women & Men Flourish in Christian Higher Education, CCCU conference, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, California, April 2008
- Enlightenment's Double Bind: Utopia and Terror in the Mythic Speculations of the French Philosphes (working title for current book project)
- "Reading Jane Eyre with American Plain Janes: Religious Enthusiasm and Christian Critique in British Romantic and Victorian Literature," in Word in the Classroom: Best Practices of Faith Integration in English, edited by Jamie Dessart and Brad Gambill, published by Abiline Christian University Press, 2009
- "Landscaping the Field of Discourse: Political Slant and Poetic Slope in Sir John Denham's 'Cooper's Hill,'" in Papers on Language and Literature, 1998
