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Sean Keck

Associate Professor

Writing, Lang and Lit, School of

Address:

Hemphill 4134
Box 6935

Headshot of Sean Keck
Hello! My research and teaching explore connections between literature and other forms of cultural expression (audio, film, photography and video games). I believe thinking beyond traditional boundaries of literary studies helps us better understand how poems and stories interact with the larger world, and I frequently incorporate multiple kinds of media into the undergraduate and graduate courses that I teach in American literature, African American literature and creative writing.

Relevant Courses

Fiction Writing (ENGL 309): This course is an introduction to the major elements of storytelling (including detailed description, narration, character development and plot). Whether you've always written stories or you're trying something new, you'll have fun growing your communication skills and pushing your imagination as you build from small creative assignments to a finished story at the end of the semester.

Advanced Fiction Writing (ENGL 409): This course expands on the elements of fiction introduced in ENGL 309 and also tackles more complex issues, like how writers discover their own voice and style. While we read and discuss contemporary short stories and craft essays, the primary focus is on the stories that you create. We devote significant time to discussing your works-in-progress in conferences and workshops.

American Realism and Naturalism (ENGL 444): In this course, we explore how American authors responded to major social and political changes--rapid industrialization, the end of slavery, the pursuit of women's rights--between the Civil War and World War I. In the face of these changes, realist and naturalist writers developed new literary strategies to document and re-imagine the world around them.

African American Literature (ENGL 449): This class explores the African American literary tradition from its mid-18th century origins to the present day. Whether you already know a lot or a little about this body of literature, you'll have the chance to meaningfully examine how diverse voices within this tradition draw on literary, oral and musical resources to speak to the complexity of Black experiences in the United States and beyond.

Senior Seminar (ENGL 496): This is the capstone course for the English major, an opportunity to take all the knowledge and skills that you've gained during your time at Radford University and develop an original, semester-long senior thesis project on a topic of your choice. I'm always really impressed with these projects, which focus on topics like the Salem Witch Trials, social media poetry and everything in-between. What topic would you choose?

Studies in American Literature II (ENGL 645): This graduate-level course highlights advanced topics in American literature from the 20th century through the present. One of my favorite versions of this class is themed around "Voices in American Literature," where we explore different literary, musical and political "voices" in works by African American, Asian American and Latinx American writers.

Service Roles

English Graduate Program Director: I help prospective students figure out if graduate school (and Radford specifically) is a good fit for their goals, and I help our current graduate students navigate the path to their degrees. If you have questions about the Department of English master's program at Radford University, I'm always happy to hear from you!

Creative Writing Awards Coordinator: With the help of our fantastic guest judges, I manage the behind-the-scenes work for the Department of English's two annual writing prizes: the Thomas Coleman Creative Writing Contest and the Nan Lacy Poetry Chapbook Contest. I also set up the spring awards reading, where we celebrate the contest winners.

Select Publications & Presentations

  • "Choose-Your-Own-Poetics: Teaching Robert Frost with Video Games." Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of Robert Frost, ed. Sean Heuston, Modern Language Association (forthcoming).
  • "'That Huge and Microscopic Career of Time': William Carlos Williams's Time-Lapse Poetics." Digressions in Deep Time: Ecocritical Approaches to Literature and the Arts, eds. Declan Lloyd and Warren Mortimer, Lexington Books, 2024.
  • "'Adjusting the Ash Heaps': Extinction and the Modernist Archive." Modernism / Modernity, vol. 7, issue 2 (Oct. 2022), https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0237
  • "Dwelling." Poet Lore, 116.3/4 (Winter/Spring 2022).
  • "Why I Love That We're Not Gods." Rattle (Feb. 2022). https://www.rattle.com/why-i-love-that-were-not-gods-by-sean-keck/
  • "Coyote Country." New Limestone Review (Mar. 2020), https://newlimestonereview.as.uky.edu/2020/03/04/coyote-country/

Education Experience

  • Ph.D. in English, Brown University
  • M.A. in English, Boston College
  • B.A. in English, Boston College

Other Interests

New York Rangers hockey. Sharks (the animal, not the hockey team).
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