Dr. Ken Bugajski

Professor of English, Director of the John Duns Scotus Honors Program

Bio

I love stories. The creative act of storytelling informs who we are, and stories help me to understand others, myself, and the world in which we live. I’m particularly interested in autobiography and life writing because they are stories of the self, which is to say that the writer of autobiography creates himself or herself through narrative. Studying the stories of others helps us tell our own, and in telling the story of the self, an individual creates a narrative for his or her life. Stories—particularly the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves—are the means by which we create our identity.


Areas of Interest

  • British Literature, 19th Century and Modernism
  • Autobiography and Life Writing
  • Young Adult Literature
  • Literature and Film
  • William Shakespeare
  • Joanna Baillie
  • Virginia Woolf

Publications

  • “Joanna Baillie.” The Routledge Research Companion to Romantic Women Writers. Ed. Ann Hawkins, Catherine S. Blackwell, and E. Leigh Bonds. Routledge, forthcoming.
  • “‘Endymion’ by John Keats” and “Sappho and Phaon by Mary Robinson.” Encyclopedia to Literary Romanticism. Ed. Andrew Maunder. New York: Facts on File, 2010.
  • “Editing and Noting: Visions and Revisions of Leigh Hunt’s Literary Lives,” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. 50 (2008): n pag. <http://www.erudit.org/revue/ravon/2008/v/n50/018141ar.html >.
  • “Joanna Baillie: An Annotated Bibliography.” [Updated version]. Joanna Baillie, Romantic Dramatist: Critical Essays. Ed. Thomas Crochunis. London: Routledge, 2004. 241-96.

Presentations

  • “‘The Death of the Soul’: Monuments of Power and Ghosts of Individuality in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway,” abstract submitted for the at the College English Association Conference. San Antonio, Texas, March 30–April 1, 2023.
  • “No Student Is an Island: Creating Connection in a Digital Age,” presented at the College English Association Conference. Hilton Head, South Carolina, March 30–April 1, 2017.
  • “A Pedagogical Horizon: Experiments and Unexpected Results in Teaching with Social Media,” presented at the College English Association Conference. Baltimore, Maryland, March 27–29, 2014.
  • “‘Our Lady of the Holy Heart, the Papists Call It’: Forgiveness and Religious Tolerance in Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘The Poor Clare,’” at the College English Association Conference. St. Petersburg, Florida, April 2011.
  • “From Player to Prayer: Transformation in the Autobiographies of John Henry Newman,” at the College English Association Conference. St. Louis, Missouri, March 2008.
  • “Visions and Revisions: Looking at Leigh Hunt and His Autobiographical Texts,” at the International Conference on Romanticism. Colorado Springs, Colorado, October 2005.