People
Faculty
Tim Melley
Titles
- Professor
- Affiliate of American Studies
- Director of the Miami University Humanities Center
Education
- Ph.D., English and American Literature, Cornell, 1995
- M.F.A., Fiction, Cornell, 1993
- M.A., English and American Literature, Cornell, 1993
- M.A., English, University of Cambridge, 1989
- B.A. in Biology and English, Amherst College, 1985
Teaching Interests
- Nineteenth and twentieth century American literature and culture
- Creative writing
- Literary and cultural theory
Research Interests
- U.S. literary and cultural history since 1950
- Cold War studies
- Postmodernism
- Fiction writing
Selected Publications
Criticism
- The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012.
- Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
- “Imagining Social Influence: The Cultural Work of Suspicion in the Postwar United States.” Dialogi: Revua za Kulturo in Druzbo. (Dialogues: Revue of Culture and Society). 3-4 (2011): 90-103. Simultaneously printed as “Predstavljati si družbene vplive: kulturne študije o sumničavosti v povojnih Združenih državah.” Trans. to Slovenian by Boris Vezjak, 95-106.
- “Brain Warfare: The Covert Sphere, Terrorism, and the Legacy of Cold War.”Grey Room 45 (Fall 2011): 18-39.
- “Paranoid Modernity and the Diagnostics of Cultural Theory.” Electronic Book Review (2008). Review essay. 7,300 words.
- “Brainwashed!: Conspiracy Theory and Ideology in the Cold War United States.” New German Critique 103, vol. 35.1 (Spring 2008): 145-164.
- “Technology, Technique, Techne: Teaching White Noise.” Approaches to Teaching Don DeLillo’s White Noise. Ed. Timothy Engles. New York: Modern Language Association, 2005: 73-83.
- “Postmodern Amnesia.” Contemporary Literature 44.1 (2003): 106-131.
- “Modern Nervousness: George Beard, Henry Adams, and the Symptoms of Historical Change.” Arizona Quarterly 59.1 (2003): 59-86.
- “A Terminal Case: William Burroughs and the Logic of Addiction.” High Anxieties: Cultural Studies in Addiction. Ed. Marc Redfield and Janet Farrell Brodie. Berkeley University of California Press, 2002: 38-60.
- “Agency Panic and the Culture of Conspiracy.” Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America. Ed. Peter Knight. New York: New York University Press, 2001. 57-81.
- "'Stalked by Love': 'Female Paranoia' and the Stalker Novel." differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 8.2 (1996): 68-100.
- “Bodies Incorporated: Scenes of Agency Panic in Gravity’s Rainbow.” Contemporary Literature 35.4 (1994): 709-738.
- “Performing Experiments: Materiality and Rhetoric in Thoreau’s Walden.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 39.4 (1993): 252-277.
Fiction
- “Overflow.” The Sun 429 (September 2011): 24-30.
- “The Prince of Natick.” Story Quarterly 40 (2004): 95-125. Nominated by SQ for Best American Nonrequired Reading.
- “Behold.” The Sun 342 (June 2004): 42-44. Nominated by Sun for Pushcart Prize. Reprinted in “Favorites from the Archives.” Presented on “As the Story Goes,” Kootenay Co-Op Radio, British Columbia (July 28, 2005).
- “Sneaker in the Dark.” Epoch 50.3 (2001): 298-314.
- “Outlaws.” Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose 28 (Winter 1998): 14-29.
- “Staring into the Sun.” The Threepenny Review 68 (Winter 1997): 16-17.
- “Going to the Elephant.” The Mississippi Review Prize Issue 23.1-2 (1994): 26-51.
- “My Crap Life.” The Sun 224 (August 1994): 12-15. Presented on “This American Life,” Public Radio International, (November 15, 1997). Nominated by Sun for Pushcart Prize.
Awards and Grants
- College of Arts and Science Distinguished Educator, Miami University, 2005.
- Greater Cincinnati Consortium of Colleges and Universities Celebration of Teaching Award, 2003.
- Phi Kappa Phi, elected by Miami University for distinction in scholarship and teaching, 2003.
- E. Philip Knox Distinguished Teaching Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, Miami University's highest teaching honor, 2002.
- NEH Group Award, “Diversity, Identity, and Public Culture: Rethinking the American Studies Curriculum at Miami University,” 2002–2003. (Grant authored by Marguerite Schaffer).
- Selwyn College Fellowship, Miami University, 2001. Visiting Bye-Fellow, Selwyn College, Cambridge.
- Alumni Teaching Fellow, Miami University, 1999–2000.
- Assigned Research Appointments, Miami University, 2010, 2007, 2003, 1998.
- Summer Research Appointment, Miami University, 2011, 2005, 2000, 1996.
- Distinguished Story of 1995 in Best American Short Stories, for “Going to the Elephant.”
- Merton J. Sealts Jr. Prize, for best essay in the 1993 volume of ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance.
- Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation, 1989–1993.
Interviews
- "Interview." The Steve Fast Show. WJBC Illinois. 24 Feb. 2013. Radio.
Work in Progress
Tim Melley is currently completing a collection of short stories and writing about the cultural politics of contemporary terrorism.