David A.

Lemke

Ph.D. Candidate 3212 Garfield Avenue

Department of English Apt. 101
University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities Minneapolis, MN, 55408
Email: lemke074@umn.edu Phone: 320-288-6036

EDUCATION

Ph.D. English, University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities, Minneapolis MN, 2019

Dissertation Title: “Imagining Reparations: Early African American Utopias and the
Visions for a Just Society.”

Committee: Timothy Brennan (co-chair), Ellen Messer-Davidow (co-chair), Nathaniel

Mills, John Wright, Karen Ho.

M.A. English Literature, North Dakota State University, Fargo ND, 2013.

B.A. English Literature, Concordia College, Moorhead MN, 2011.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

19th and 20th Century American Literature

African American Literature
Critical Race Theory
Utopian Studies
Political Economy

PUBLICATIONS

“Debt as Freedom: The Production of Black Subjectivity in Richard Wright’s Lawd Today!”
Currently under second-round review at Mediations.

“The Illusory Promises of Freedom: Frederick Douglass and the Utopia of Liberation.”
Race and Utopian Desire in American Literature and Society, Edward Chan and Patricia Ventura
(eds.), Palgrave Macmillan. Forthcoming in 2019.

PRESENTATIONS

“Neoliberal Utopias,” Seminar: The State as/of Utopias, American Comparative Literature
Association Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, March 29, 2018.
“Frederick Douglass and the Search for the Space of Black Emancipation,” Seminar: Race and
Utopia, Society for Utopian Studies Conference, Memphis, TN, November 8, 2017.

“Utopia and Praxis: Rethinking Possibilities for Intellectual Labor,” American Comparative
Literature Association Annual Meeting, Cambridge, MA, March 17, 2016.

“Freedom From What?: Milton Friedman’s Utopias,” Society for Utopian Studies Conference,
State College, PA, November 5, 2015.

“Working Together: Leadership and Community and Eric Gansworth’s Smoke Dancing,” Native
American Literature Symposium, Minneapolis, MN, March 22, 2013.

“‘It’s the end of the world as we know it’: Reading A Canticle for Leibowitz as a Critical
Dystopia,” Society for Utopian Studies Conference, Toronto, ON, October 5, 2012.

“Yossarian’s Lonely Fight: Catch-22 and Cultural Hegemony,” Midwestern Conference for
Language, Literature and Media, DeKalb, IL, March 30, 2012.

“Through the Eye of the Beholder: Examining Utopian Dialogue in Oryx and Crake and A
Canticle for Leibowitz Through Benjamin the Old Jew and Jimmy the Snowman,” Society for
Utopian Studies Conference, State College, PA, October 20, 2011.

AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

Graduate Research Partnership Program Summer Fellowship, 2018

Summer fellowship that supports graduate research in collaboration with a faculty
mentor.

University of Minnesota Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship, 2017-2018

Highly competitive, university wide fellowship that supports a year of residency at the
Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Minnesota.

University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts Fellowship, 2014-15

First year fellowship, awarded to select applicants to College of Liberal Arts doctoral
programs.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Graduate Instructor, University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities (responsible for designing and

teaching courses as sole instructor)

American Literature II: Revolutions in Race, Class, and Gender from 1860 to Today – Fall 2018
American Literature I: Land, Property, and the American Frontier – Summer 2017
University Writing: Writing as Art, Writing as Skill – Fall 2016 and Spring 2017
Teaching Assistant, University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities (responsible for designing and
teaching small discussion sections of a large lecture course, and grading student written
work for the course)

Survey of African American Literature II– Fall 2017

Survey of American Literature and Culture II – Spring 2017, Fall 2015
Introduction to Italian Culture: Imagining Italy – Fall 2016
Survey of American Literature and Culture I – Spring 2016

Teaching Specialist, University of Minnesota, Morris (responsible for designing and

teaching courses as sole instructor)

Writing for the Liberal Arts: Reading and Writing in a Non-Critical World (3 sections) – Spring
2014

Graduate Instructor, North Dakota State University (responsible for designing and
teaching courses as sole instructor)

First Year Writing: Learning Leadership Through Writing (2 sections)– Fall 2011, Spring 2012,
Fall 2012

ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities

Co-organizer, RIGS Reparations Symposium, 2018

This three-day interdisciplinary symposium titled “Reparations, Repatriation, and
Redress” is sponsored by the RIGS (Race, Indigeneity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)
Program at the University of Minnesota. I was responsible for soliciting speakers and
organizing a graduate student reading group; I will serve as a discussant for a panel on
African American reparations.

President, Graduate Student Organization in English, 2016 – 2018

The GSO advocates for graduate students in the department’s MA, PhD, and MFA
programs. My responsibilities included helping organize recruitment week events for
PhD, MA, and MFA applicants who were offered places; setting up professional
mentoring sessions for first-year students; and facilitating graduate student participation
in hiring and department policy.

Professionalization Officer, 20th-21st c. Research Group, 2015 – 2017

Organized professionalization events, including teaching seminars and guest speakers, for
this research group, which includes faculty and students in the English Department.

Research Assistant, Professor Ellen Messer-Davidow, 2015 – 2017

 My responsibilities included retrieving materials, proofreading, source checking, and
general editing on her forthcoming book: The Making of Reverse Discrimination: How
DeFunis and Bakke Bleached Racism from Equal Protection.

Member, English Department Undergraduate Committee, 2016 – 2017

This department committee oversees the undergraduate program—curriculum, teaching,
and other matters.

Member, English Department Graduate Committee, 2014 – 2015

This department committee oversees the MA and PhD programs in literature as well as
related graduate student matters..

North Dakota State University

Member, English Department Graduate Committee, 2011 – 2013

Served on a department committee responsible for managing the graduate programs in
English at North Dakota State University.

Finance Chair, Red River Graduate School Conference, 2011 – 2013

Fundraised and wrote grants to support the Red River Graduate School Conference at
North Dakota State University in Spring 2012 and Spring 2013. I was also responsible for
managing the budget for the conference.

Officer, English Graduate Organization, 2011 – 2013

Served as an officer in an organization to advocate for the rights of graduate students
within the English department of North Dakota State University.

Research Assistant, Professor Gary Totten, 2013

My responsibilities included archival research, proofreading, and general editing for
African American Travel Narratives from Abroad (University of Massachusetts Press,
2015). I also prepared readings and other materials for his undergraduate classes.

Student Mentor, Fargo XO Sugar Labs (One Laptop per Child Project), 2011
Tutored and taught simple programming and computer design in Madison Elementary in
Fargo, ND as a part of the Fargo XO Sugar Labs project—a faculty designed initiative to
help spread computer literacy to underprivileged and immigrant communities in North
Dakota.

LANGUAGES

Italian (fluent), French (reading)

ACADEMIC AFFILIATIONS

Modern Language Association

American Comparative Literature Association
Society for Utopian Studies

REFERENCES

Timothy Brennan, Professor of English and Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature,
University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities
brenn032@umn.edu

Ellen Messer-Davidow, Professor of English, University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities

emd@umn.edu

Nathaniel Mills, Assistant Professor of English, University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities

mills175@umn.edu

Karen Ho, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of RIGS (Race, Indigeneity, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies) Program, University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities
karenho@umn.edu