Elizabeth H Sagaser | Colby College (original) (raw)

I am an associate professor of English at Colby College. My research, teaching, and writing explore how literature--particularly poetry-- experiments with attention, perception and memory and how it engages and develops ideas across centuries. This work increasingly engages in the politics of literature, and how literary history--particularly the dynamics of canon--can be critically illuminated by cognitive behavioral psychology, and both cognitive and ecocritical philosophy.

My articles on Shakespeare, Spenser, Daniel, Mary Sidney Herbert and Milton explore ways poems not only represent thought, memory, anticipation, anxiety, knowledge and pleasure, but also provoke or intervene in these (in the brains/bodies of readers and writers). My essay, "Flirting with Eternity: Teaching Form and Meter in a Renaissance Literature Course" argues for historicizing the technical features of poems while simultaneously bringing them to life in the classroom. My senior seminar, "Poetry and Cognition" poses questions about language and the brain/body, aesthetic experience, attention, memory, empathy, self and other, and literary history. Students read poems from the Renaissance to the present, and bring into conversation ideas from linguistics, philosophy, psychology and cognitive science.
I have also published poems and essays in various periodicals.

The underlying concern of much of my work is how people have used, and do use, literature--especially poetry-- to grapple with mortality and the failings of our species; to reflect on and experiment with the nature of being; to build and experience community; to listen and respond to others, even across centuries.
Address: Colby College
English Dept.
Mayflower Hill
Waterville, ME 04901

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