Anton Vander Zee

Associate Professor and M.A. Program Director

I received my Ph.D. in English from Stanford University in 2012. After serving in a visiting role for three years, I became Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston and Faculty Fellow in the Honors College, where I direct the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards and participate in the Honors First-Year Experience. I have taught students around the world, from Singapore and Siberia, to Stanford University and Stephens College. My teaching and research interests include nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature with an emphasis on Walt Whitman and his influence; poetry and poetics; the personal essay; genre studies; first-year seminar pedagogy; transnational modernism; autobiography; aesthetics; age studies; ideas of form and formalism; and contemporary poetry.

In 2011, the University of Iowa Press published A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line, an collection that I co-edited and introduced. I have published articles and review essays in Modern Philology, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Agni, and Agni Online, the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, ESQ, and the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council. In addition, I have entries on "serial form," "hieroglyph," and "nativity poem" in  the new Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012). 

Education

Ph.D., Stanford University

M.A., Stanford University

B.A., Purdue University

Research Interests

Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics; Walt Whitman;Late Style/Late Work;Aesthetics;New Formalism;First-Year Experience Pedagogy;The Personal Essay

Courses Taught

The Self as Story: Autobiography at the Intersection of Philosophy, Culture, and Art 

American Poetry Since 1945

Schooling American Poetry

Sustainable Futures: Introduction to Academic Writing 

Walt Whitman and His Influence, Senior Seminar 

Introduction to English Studies 

American Literature Survey 

The ‘Great’ American Novel 1900-196

Beyond George Street: Honors College First-Year Experience 

Millennials Writing / Writing Millennials: Introduction to Academic Writing

Pre-America: Literatures of Exploration, Contact, and Settlement 

Modern Poetry: From Word to World 

The Rhetorics of Age: Introduction to Academic Writing 

Writing the ‘American’ Self: Autobiography from the Founding to Facebook 

Transnational Poetry: Walt Whitman in America and Beyond 

Honors and Awards

ExCEL Award for Outstanding Faculty for the College of Charleston Honors College

RPG Research Presentation Award (with student), College of Charelston

Academic Affairs Small Grant for Innovative Teaching and Learning, College of Charleston

Summer Undergraduate Research Funding Grant (with student), College of Charleston

Recent Publications

Edited Collection

Vander Zee, Anton and Trisha Folds-Bennett, editors. Honoring the First-Year Experience: Curricular Foundations in Honors. National Collegiate Honors Council Monograph Series, in Preparation

Vander Zee, Anton and Emily Rosko, editors. A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line. University of Iowa Press, 2011.

Articles, Reviews, & Entries

Vamder Zee. Anton. "Late Whitman: Critical Pasts, Critical Futures," Resources for American Literary Study, vol. 40, 2018, 90-144.

Vander Zee, Anton. “Inventing Late Whitman,” ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, vol. 63, no. 2, 2017, pp. 42-81

Vander Zee, Anton. “Whitman’s Late Lives,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 35, no. 2, 2017, pp. 174-200

Vander Zee, Anton. “Becoming Legible: Helping Students Navigate Promotional Genres of Self-Narration.” Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, vol. 18, no. 1, 2017, pp. 29-37