Miles Orvell
orvell@temple.edu
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Miles Orvell is Professor of English and American
studies, with a broad interest in modern American culture. Orvell's
first book, a study of Flannery O'Connor, was reprinted as Flannery
O'Connor: An Introduction (University Press of Mississippi, 1991):
other recent books include The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity
in American Culture, 1880-1940 (University of North Carolina Press),
which was co-winner in 1990 of the American Studies Association's
John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, and After the Machine: Visual
Arts and the Erasing of Cultural Boundaries (Mississippi, 1995). His
essays and reviews on literature, photography, documentary film,
technology and the arts, have appeared in American Art, History
of Photography, Film Quarterly, American Literary History, Prospects,
Tikkun, Winterthur Portfolio and many other journals. Most recently,
"Virtual Culture and the Logic of American Technology" appeared in
Revue Française d'Études Américaines; and an essay called "Looking
Backward to Disneyland: Bellamy, Mumford, and the Fate of Paradise in
America" appeared in Negotiations of America's National Identity.
One of Orvell's main areas of interest is visual culture
and its relationship to literature. He recently edited a collection of
FSA photographer John Vachon's work (John Vachon’s America: Photographs
and Letters from the Depression to World War II, 2003); and he has written
a history of photography in the United States for the Oxford History of
Art Series (American Photography, 2003). Another area of interest is
literature and ethnicity; Orvell has co-edited Inventing America: Readings
in Identity and Culture and has directed N.E.H. Summer Seminars for
School Teachers on Ethnic Autobiography. Active in the American Studies
Association, Orvell is Editor in Chief of the Encyclopedia of American
Studies Online, an annual expansion of the four volume print edition
published by Grolier Press in 2001.
Orvell has presented papers and lectured widely at
conferences and universities in the U.S. and Europe and was a Fulbright
Professor of American Studies in Denmark (1988). He serves on the
Editorial Advisory Board of the University of North Carolina Press
series Cultural Studies of the United States, and on the advisory
board of Revue Française d’Études Américaines. His current projects
include a study of the symbols of community in 20th century urban
design and a study of the contradictions of documentary photography.
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