Education
PhD, 2008 Claremont Graduate University
MA, 1996 University of Texas, Austin
Lecturer
PhD, 2008 Claremont Graduate University
MA, 1996 University of Texas, Austin
American literature
Composition
K-pop
Dr. Becker teaches first year writing, American literature, and storytelling in K-pop videos, group storylines, and fan culture. She has also recently taught a course on semiotics through K-pop videos. Her research is currently focused on Korea鈥檚 N-po generation and how their concerns are reflected in contemporary K-pop videos. Her most recent conference presentations include 鈥Crawling, Fighting, Bleeding, Now I'm Sick of It鈥: K-pop鈥檚 N-po Generation and 鈥淚鈥檒l Give You My Blood鈥: Monsters, Murder, and Masculinity in the K-pop Gothic. She also has a chapter on gay celebrity autobiography in the forthcoming in A History of American Gay Autobiography from Cambridge University Press.
Research:
Current research includes analyses of two Manic Street Preachers鈥 albums: a study of the body as a vehicle of political resistance within the songs of The Holy Bible, and melancholia, Welsh identity, and the working class on Everything Must Go; Britpop, Cool Cymru and issues of nationhood in England and Wales in the 1990s; the formation of male identity in Richard Brautigan鈥檚 Trout Fishing in America.
Publications:
Book review, Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making It in the Office by Lynn Peril. Women鈥檚 Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 41.5, July 2012
Guest editor, 鈥淥h Pretty Boy, Can鈥檛 You Give Me Nothing But Surrender?: The Presence and Importance of Women in Punk Rock,鈥 special issue of Women鈥檚 Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, January 2012
Co-author, with Wendy Martin: 鈥淭he Cold War Novel: The American Novel Between 1945-1970鈥 Blackwell Companion to the American Novel, Wiley-Blackwell (2011)
Co-editor, with Wendy Martin and Danielle Hinrichs: Anthology of the Short Story, Houghton Mifflin (2006)
Co-author, with Wendy Martin: 鈥淓udora Welty,鈥 鈥淢ary McCarthy,鈥 and 鈥淲omen Writers of the Twentieth Century: An Overview鈥 Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, Oxford University Press (2004)
Recent conference presentations:
鈥溾橶hat a Lovely Nib Trout Fishing in America Would Make鈥: Writing Contemporary Manhood Into Existence in Trout Fishing in America鈥; American Literature Association Conference, Washington D.C., May 2014
鈥淏ored Out of My Mind: The Manic Street Preachers and the Beauty of Boredom鈥; Popular Culture Association National Conference, Chicago, IL April 2014
鈥淚n The Drooping Hours: Melancholy and New Masculinity in This Side of Paradise鈥; American Literature Association Conference, Boston, MA, 2013
鈥溾橳he World is Wrong鈥: Tate Langdon, Kit Walker, and Perpetual Boyhood on American Horror Story鈥; Popular Culture Association National Conference, Washington D.C. 2013
鈥淭he Hard Times of Being a Modern Man: Economic Failure and Masculine Malaise in The Crack-Up Essays;鈥 Fitzgerald in the 1930s: Trauma and Literary Celebrity; American Literature Association Conference, Boston, MA 2011
鈥淪omething, Someone, Some Spirit鈥: Haunted Masculinity and Kerouac鈥檚 Debt to Whitman in On the Road;鈥 The Beats and Walt Whitman Conference, Brooklyn, New York, March 2010
Memberships/Affiliations:
Modern Language Association, F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, Richard Brautigan Society, Popular Culture Association