Dr. Diana Polley
Associate Professor of English and Director of the Martinson Honors Program
Education
Ph.D., English, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY)
M.Phil., English, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY)
B.A., English, Dartmouth College, Summa Cum Laude
Professional Experience
Associate Professor of English, United States Air Force Academy (2019-present)
Director of the Scholars Program, United States Air Force Academy (2020-present)
Professor of English, Southern New Hampshire University (2017-2019)
Associate Professor of English, Southern New Hampshire University (2010-2017)
Coordinator of the English Language and Literature Program, Southern New Hampshire University (2008-2016)
Assistant Professor of English, Southern New Hampshire University (2006-2010)
Assistant Professor of English, Borough of Manhattan Community College (2005-2006)
Co-Coordinator of Writing Across the Curriculum, Borough of Manhattan Community College (2005-2006)
Instructor of English, Borough of Manhattan Community College (2005-2006)
Honors & Awards
Echoes of Emerson: Recipient of the Robert Penn Warren—Cleanth Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Scholarship and Criticism (2018)
Summer Research Grant, Southern New Hampshire University, 2007-2008, 2012-2013, 2015-2017
Sabbatical Leave, Southern New Hampshire University, Fall 2013
Faculty Travel Grant, Southern New Hampshire University, 2011, 2013
Davis Educational Foundation Grant ($152,000), to revise and implement new General Education at Southern New Hampshire University, 2010
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar, “Reading Emerson’s Essays.” University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 2005
Research and Scholarly Interests
American Literature of the Revolution and Early Republic
19th-Century American Literature
Realism and Naturalism
Gilded Age and the Progressive Era
The American West
Literary Theory
Publications
Letters from an American Farmer by J. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur. Digital Critical Edition in progress (with Dr. Mary Balkun). Edition in progress available to view here.
“Going Digital: Teaching Crèvecoeur in the Twenty-First Century.” Digital Humanities Quarterly. (with Dr. Mary Balkun). Forthcoming.
Review of The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Angel Fire. By Steven Trout. WLA: War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities. Forthcoming.
Echoes of Emerson: Rethinking Realism in Twain, James, Wharton, and Cather. University of Alabama Press, 2017. Recipient of the Robert Penn Warren—Cleanth Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Scholarship and Criticism (2018).
“Americanizing Cather: Myth and Fiction in My Ántonia.” Willa Cather’s My Ántonia: Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism 2008. 141-49. Reprint.
“Americanizing Cather: Myth and Fiction in My Ántonia.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 49.3 (Winter-Spring 2006): 61-64.