Having received his PhD from the University of California, Irvine, in 1999, John D. Schwetman has been teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth ever since. With a focus primarily on literature from the past one hundred years, he has written articles on literary works by John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. His tastes are wide-ranging and include research into popular culture alongside more traditional canonical texts, so he has written on works as disparate as a graphic novel by Chris Ware, a post-colonial work by Nigerian novelist Chris Abani, and Harry Beck’s map of the London Underground. He is currently working on a book titled Far from Home, which examines the road novel as an influential form of twentieth-century American literature.
Teaching Interests
American Literature, World Literature, Theory and Criticism; Courses: American Literature I and II, Great American Authors, Introduction to World Literature, Methods of Literary Study, Contemporary Literature, Poetry, Science Fiction.
Courses Taught
ENGL 1001: Great American Authors
ENGL 1582: Intro to World Literatures
ENGL 1818: Science Fiction in Literature and Film
ENGL 1907: Introduction to Literature
ENGL 3563: American Literature I
ENGL 3564: American Literature II
ENGL 3906: Methods of Literary Study
ENGL 5375: Modern Poetry
ENGL 3411: Modern Short Story
ENGL 5580: The Novel
ENGL 8191: Graduate Seminar in American Literature
ENGL 8906: Introduction to Critical Theory
Research Interests
20th-Century American Literature, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Literature
Recent Publications
“Contact Points: The Roadside Diner’s Machinery of Work in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.” Left in the West, edited by Gioia Woods. U of Nevada P, 2018, pp. 232-253.
“‘Shadowy Objects in Test Tubes’: Marking Grievance in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, vol. 19, no. 4, 2017, pp. 421-440.
“‘Ever Heard of Evel Knievel?’: James Bond Meets the Rural Sheriff.” Cinej Cinema Journal, vol. 6, no. 1, 2017, pp. 94-118.
“‘I Was in Italy . . . and I Spoke Italian’: Fighting Other People’s Battles in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.” Hemingway in Northern Italy, edited by Mark Cirino and Mark Ott. U. P. of Florida, 2017, pp. 127-144.
“Leaving Lagos: Diasporic and Cosmopolitan Migrations in Chris Abani’s GraceLand.” Pacific Coast Philology, vol. 49 no. 2, Fall 2014, pp. 184-202.
“Harry Beck’s Underground Map: A Convex Lens for the Global City.” Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies—Special Issue on Rails and the City vol. 4, no. 2, Spring 2014, pp. 86-103.
“The Superhero and the Prospective Geography: Tropes of the Cityscape in Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth.” IJOCA (The International Review of Comic Arts) vol. 13, no. 2, Fall 2011, pp. 642-658.
"Ships Passing: Encounters with Strangers in Melville's "Benito Cereno" and Conrad's "The Secret Sharer." Hearts of Darkness: Melville, Conrad and Narratives of Oppression. M-Studio, 2011, pp. 243-254.
"The American Cosmopolitan: Deracination in the Works of Jack Kerouac and Toni Morrison." Cercles: Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone, vol. 19, 2009.
"'Like a Thirst for Salt, for My Childhood River': Situating the San Francisco Bay Area in Robert Hass's Praise Poems." The River Is a Strong Brown God: Selected Papers from an Interdisciplinary Conference. Sunray, 2008, pp. 181-192.
"Romanticism and the Cortical Stack: Cyberpunk Subjectivity in the Takeshi Kovacs Novels of Richard K. Morgan." Pacific Coast Philology, vol. 41, fall 2006, pp. 124-140.