Email: grayer02@luther.edu
Office: Main 505
Phone: 563-387-1138

Education: Ph.D., State University of New York at Binghamton; M.A., McGill University; B.A., Saint Olaf College.

Snapshot

Erik Grayson, a visiting assistant professor of English, comes to Luther from upstate New York, where he recently completed his doctorate at the State University of New York at Binghamton. A scholar of American and contemporary global literature, Erik has published work on Edgar Allan Poe, Jamaica Kincaid, Don DeLillo, and J. M. Coetzee, among others. He has also published several short stories in literary journals. Outside of  his academic life, Erik has a passion for punk rock and hosts a radio show each week on KPVL in Decorah.

Research Interests: American literature, contemporary literature, postcolonial studies, existentialism, Scandinavian Studies, and apocalyptic fiction.

Thoughts on Teaching:

My teaching philosophy is, and has always been, to love knowledge enough to share it with my students and to encourage them to share theirs with each other as well as with me. Obviously, this is an idealistic approach to education, but I feel one must always keep such an ideal before him- or herself. Realistically, I cannot expect to captivate the soul and imagination of each student I encounter, but I can attempt to do so, and in making the attempt, I can encourage the development of that love I have in the hearts and minds of my students. 

In a  discussion class, I try to ask questions that spawn student questions. I try to ask students for their impressions and responses, filling in the gaps of their conversation with whatever interesting nugget of information I can contribute. I go to my classes as if I were a student myself, prepared to take notes, ask questions, and share insights.  I behave in such a fashion because seeing my favorite professors join in an animated discussion of a book always made me want to read and re-read and discuss every piece of literature I could find.

Ultimately, I suppose, conversation is at the core of my teaching philosophy. The liberal arts, it seems to me, require such an attitude. After all, a liberal arts education amounts to an interdisciplinary conversation, encouraging intellectual synergy and self-discovery through the study of hard and social sciences and the appreciation of fine and practical arts. As a teacher, my function in that conversation is to share what I know and believe in such a way as to keep the conversations going whether I am present or not.

Writing Sample:

The following passage is an excerpt from my review of Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without A Country for Logos, an interdisciplinary academic journal:

“Vonnegut, currently a chain-smoking octogenarian, secured a place for himself in the canon of postmodern American literature by fearlessly tackling such subjects as aging, death, war, mental illness, existentialism, and humanism. From his concern with the dehumanizing mechanization of American society in Player Piano to his examination of war and mass destruction in Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut has never failed to share his opinions on sensitive and important topics. With unflinching honesty, Vonnegut has swept away the fanciful illusions (“foma,” to the adherents of the author’s fictional Bokononist faith in Cat’s Cradle) under whose umbrage we hide from the world’s uncomfortable realities in an effort to show us the necessity of his own radically sane humanism. Not unlike Eliot Rosewater in God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Vonnegut’s voice has traditionally been a gentle one as he has guided us through worlds devoid of free will, full of violence, and populated by lunatics only to reveal to us, in the end, that these alien places are, in fact, just outside our living room windows.”

If you’re interested, you can find the full review here: http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.3/grayson_vonnegut.htm