Dr. Joseph Csicsila
Professor and Head, Department of English Language and Literature
Expertise: Mark Twain, American Literature, 19th Century American Culture
About
Joseph Csicsila joined the Department of English at Eastern Michigan University as an assistant professor in 2000. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Auburn University and the University of Nevada. Professor Csicsila teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature and literary criticism. In 2002 he received Eastern Michigan University's highest honor, the Ronald W. Collins Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching.
Csicsila's research focuses generally on American literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. His principal interests include Mark Twain, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett and William Faulkner. In addition, Csicsila studies the ways that American writers have been taught in our nation's universities throughout the 20th century and how these pedagogical trends have impacted each author's place in the American literary canon as it has evolved over time. This line of inquiry is the subject of his first book, Canons by Consensus: Critical Trends and American Literature Anthologies, published in 2004 by the University of Alabama Press. In 2007 he was invited to join the six-person editorial team of The Prentice Hall Anthology of American Literature.
Csicsila's work on the treatment of American writers in the college classroom also led to his development of a groundbreaking course for literature and teaching majors at Eastern Michigan University called "Mark Twain for Teachers." In June 2002, Csicsila traveled with twenty undergraduate and graduate students from Eastern Michigan to Quarry Farm, Mark Twain's summer home in Elmira, New York, where he taught an intensive summer class that dealt primarily with the handling of Twain's best-known and oftentimes controversial writings in high school and college literature courses. In April 2017, he taught the course for a second time.
Professor Csicsila has delivered presentations around the country, including at the International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies, the Modern Language Association national convention, the American Literature Association annual conference and the College English Association annual meeting, to name a few. He has lectured at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Historical Society and the Center for Mark Twain Studies in Elmira, New York, where he has been a three-time scholar in residence fellow (1996, 2010 and 2015). Csicsila currently serves as assistant editor of the Mark Twain Annual.
