My primary research and teaching interests are in the history and theory of poetry and poetics, in the forms and functions that an ancient and apparently universal art acquires in America from 1860 to the present. I am particularly interested in questions about the nature and meaning of the category of "the person" as they arise in literature, in philosophy and in cognitive theory, and in the consequences of this inquiry for social thought. I also study and teach modern and contemporary American novels and film, with an emphasis the way different media manage the question of what counts as knowledge in a culture with competing ideas about the value of tradition and of futurity, wisdom and skepticism, and archaic and modern modes of passion and reason.

• "Language Poetry and Collective Life," Critical Inquiry 30:1 (Autumn 2003)
• Review of Libbie Rifkin's Career Moves: Olson, Creeley, Zukofsky, Berrigan, and the American Avant-Garde, Modernism/Modernity 10.1 (January 2003)
• Review of Susan Stewart's Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, Modern Philology 101:3 (February 2004)

Photograph by Aaron Siskind Courtesy of the Aaron Siskind Foundation

Contact Information: Department of English The University of Chicago 1115 East 58th Street Chicago, IL 60637 Office: Walker 503 Phone: (773) 702-7989 Fax: (773) 702-2495 izenberg@uchicago.edu