University of Minnesota
Department of English
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Home > Faculty Directory : Kent Bales

Faculty

 

Kent Bales

Professor

Department of English
University of Minnesota
312 Lind Hall
207 Church Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-625-4889
bales@umn.edu

Special Interests

  • American literature (especially of the nineteenth-century) 
  • Romanticisms 
  • Translators, immigrant and exiled writers 
  • Literature and the other arts (especially the visual arts) 

 

Honors & Awards

  • Office of Minority & Special Student Affairs ($10,000 for MELUS Convention), 1990-91
  • Samantha Smith Memorial Reciprocal Student Exchange ($35,000, from USIA), 1990-91, 1991-92 ($30,000).  Co-organizer: the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Education.
  • Fulbright Research Fellow, Hungary, 1988-89.
  • International Research and Exchanges Board grant: planning conference on the reception of American literature in Hungary since 1945, 1982-83. (Joint Project: IREX, American Council of Learned Societies, and Hungarian Academy of Sciences.)
  • University of Minnesota Graduate School research grant for project in the reception of American literature in Hungary since 1945, 1981-82; 1984-85; 1988-89; 1990-91.
  • Minnesota Development Fund Grant, Office of International Programs, 1980.
  • Fulbright Lecturer, Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest, 1980.
  • Visiting Membership, comparative literature section of the Institute of Literary Studies, the  Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 1973-74, 1981, 1988-89.

 

Background

  • Education
    • Yale University, 1958, B.A., American Studies
    • San Jose State College, 1963, M.A., English
    • University of California at Berkeley, 1967, Ph.D., English
  • Academic Appointments
    • Professor of English, University of Minnesota, 1982-
    • Chair, Department of English, University of Minnesota, 1983-88, 2000-2003
    • University of Salzburg, 1996-97, Exchange Professor
    • Director of Graduate Studies, Liberal Studies, University of Minnesota, 1994-1996
    • Director of Graduate Studies, Department of English, University of Minnesota, 1991-94
    • Associate Professor of English, University of Minnesota, 1970-82
    • Lóránd Eötvös University, Budapest, 1980, Fulbright Lecturer
    • Assistant Professor of English, University of Minnesota, 1967-70
    • University of California at Berkeley, 1967, Acting Instructor
    • University of California at Berkeley, 1966, Teaching Assistant
    • Menlo School, Menlo Park, California, 1958-66, Instructor

Publications

  • Monographs
    • Editor (and contributor of a preface), Newer Voices: Graduate Student Essays from Minnesota on the Profession of English Studies. 1997.
    • Afterword to Richard Brautigan, Pisztrángfogás amerikában, Egy déli tábornok az amerikai polgárháborúban [the Hungarian translation of A Confederate General from Big Sur and Trout Fishing in America]. László Horvath, trans. Budapest: Európa könyvkiadó, 1981, pp. 273-85.
    • "O. Henry," in American Writers, Supplement II, Part 1, New York: Scribner's, 1981, pp. 385-412.
    • Editorial Associate, i.e., compiler of Minnesota material, for American Literary Manuscripts:A Checklist of Holdings in Academic, Historical, and Public Libraries: Museums; and Authors' Homes in the United States. 2nd edition. Ed. J. Albert Robbins. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977.
    • Nathaniel Hawthorne's Use of the Sublime. University of California, Berkeley, 1967. [See DA 28: 416A-63A.]
    Chapters
    • "Walt Whitman's Daughter, or, Postcolonial Self-Transformation in the Fiction of Bharati Mukherjee," in Daughters of Restlessness: Women's Literature at the End of the Millenium. Ed. Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, Gerhild Reisner, and Hanna Wallinger. Heidelberg: C. Winter Verlag, 1998. Pp. 187-201.
    • "From Émigré to Ethnic: Form, Subject, and Audience in Emigrant Hungarian Writing," in The European Emigrant Experience in the U. S. A., Proceedings of the 15th Annual Meeting of the Austrian Association for American Studies. Ed. Walter Hölbling and Reinhold Wagnleitner. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1992. Pp. 203-22.
    • "Pictures, Signs, and Stereotypes in Hawthorne's Meditations on the Origins of American Culture." In The Origins and Originality of American Culture (Papers Presented at the International Conference in American Studies, Budapest, 9-11 April 1980), ed. Tibor Frank. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984. Pp. 35-44.
    • "Pictures, Signs, and Stereotypes in Hawthorne's Meditations on the Origins of American Culture," in The Paradigm Exchange: University of Minnesota Faculty and Students in Colloquium. Ed. René Jara, et al., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, College of Liberal Arts, 1981, pp. 125-34.
    • "The Allegory and the Radical Romantic Ethic of The Blithedale Romance," in The Blithedale Romance, A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Seymour Gross and Rosalie Murphy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), pp. 407-13. Excerpted from article, below.
    Articles and Review Essays
    • "Assimilating Liliom: Carousel and the Making of Yet Another American." Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (1999).
    • "Intention and Readers' Responses." Neohelicon, 13:1 (1986), 177-94.
    • "Retrenchment and Reallocation: From Budget to Curriculum to Habit." ADE Bulletin, 85 (Winter 1986), 21-25.
    • "Budapest Impressions of a Guest Professor." New Hungarian Quarterly, 23 (Spring 1982), 144-50.
    • "Reconstructing Hawthorne." Review article of Nina Baym, The Shape of Hawthorne's Career; Richard H. Brodhead, Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel; Kenneth Dauber, Rediscovering Hawthorne; and Edgar A. Dryden, Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Poetics of Enchantment. Review, 2 (1980), 137-63.
    • Review Article of Arlin Turner, Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography and Hyatt H. Waggoner, The Presence of Hawthorne. Western Humanities Review, 35:2 (Summer 1981), 183-88.
    • "An American 'Catsplay.'" New Hungarian Quarterly, 19 (Spring 1978), No. 69, 198-202.
    • "Generic Expectations and the (In-)Competent Reader." Review article of Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel by Richard H. Brodhead and Language and Knowledge in the Late Novels of Henry James by Ruth Bernard Yeazell. Centrum, 4:1 (Spring 1976), 50-56
    • "Hawthorne's Prefaces and Romantic Perspectivism." ESQ, 23:2 (1977), no. 87 o.s., 69-88. "Sexual Exploitation and the Fall from Natural Virtue in Rappaccini's Garden." ESQ, 24:3 (1978), No. 92 o.s., 133-44.
    • "Factors Determining the Translation of American Belles-Lettres into Hungarian, 1945-1973." The Slavonic and East European Review, 54: 2 (April 1976), 173-91
    • "Budapest Theatre Through American Eyes." New Hungarian Quarterly, 16 (Summer 1975), No. 58, 202-207. Translated by Tünde Vajda: "Magyar színházakban, amerikai szemmel." Színhaz, 8 (July 1975), 32-36.
    • "Fishing the Ambivalence, or, A Reading of Trout Fishing in America." Western Humanities Review, 29:4 (Winter 1975), 29-42. Excerpted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, ed. Carolyn Riley and Phyllis Carmel Mendelson (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1976), vol. 5.
    • "The Allegory and the Radical Romantic Ethic of The Blithedale Romance." American Literature, 46:1 (March 1974), 41-53.
    •  "The Blithedale Romance: Coverdale's Mean and Subversive Egotism." Bucknell Review, 21 (Fall-Winter 1973), 60-82.
    Reviews
    • Philip Furia, The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik (Spring 1992) 17:1, 127-29.
    • Brook Thomas, Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature: Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville. The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, 14:1 (Spring 1988), 16-17.
    • "The MFRB (Minnesota Faculty Review of Books)." Minnesota, 87:4 (March/April 1988), 35- 36.
    • "Women in Revolt," a film by Károly Makk. Minnesota Daily, March 16, 1985.
    • Edgar Dryden, Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Poetics of Enchantment. English Language Notes, 16:3 (1979), 259-61.
    Notes
    • "Language and Literature: Boundaries and Transcendence." Changing Lives, Minnesota, the World: Fulbright Recipients Assess the Effects of Their Awards, ed. Gayla Marty. Minnesota Fulbright Alumni Association, 1988.
    • "Notes on Recent Uses of Shakespeare in Hungary." Council on National Literatures/ Quarterly World Report, 2:1 (January 1979), 4-9. Abstracted in 2:2 (April 1979), 10.
    • "Names and the Root of Evil in 'Rappaccini's Daughter.'" Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal, (1978) 174-78.
    • Untitled program notes for István Örkény's Catsplay. Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, 1 August-15 October, 1977, 2 pp.
    • "Looking for American Literary Manuscripts in Minnesota Libraries." MnU Bulletin, 4 (April 1973), 22-25.
    • "Poetic Justice in 'The Cask of Amontillado.'" Poe Studies, 5 (December 1972), 51.
    • "Touching Taylor Overly: A Note on 'Meditation Six.'" Early American Literature, 5 (Fall 1970), 57-59 (with William J. Aull).
    Reports
    • "Történelem, fikció, igazság" [History, Fiction, Truth], a report of the third Salgó Conference, Loránd Eötvös University. Trans. György Raáb. USA, No. 63 (1989), 81-84.
    • Report, sessions on literature and the other arts, in the MLA Forum "British and American Romanticism: Literary and Artistic Crosscurrents." The Heliconian: The American Comparative Literature Association's Newsletter of Literature and the Other Arts, 7:2 (Spring 1982), 3-4.
    • "Some First Practical Steps: A Report on the Conference on Cooperation Between Secondary and College Teachers at the University of Minnesota." Minnesota English Journal, 6 (Fall 1970), 12-15.

Teaching

  • University of Minnesota
    • CLA 1907: Freshman Seminar: Contemporary Scarlet Letters
    • EngL 1201: Introduction: American Literature
    • EngL 3880: Literatures of the American Prairies
    • EngL 3211/5120: American Poetry to 1900
    • EngL 3221: The American Novel to 1900
    • EngL 3222: The American Novel from 1900
    • AmSt 3301, 3302, 3303: Proseminar for American Studies undergraduates.
    • AmSt 8202, 8203: Introduction to American Studies: Marriage and Divorce in the 19th and 20th Centuries
    • EngL 1014: Introduction: Romantic Literature: 1789-1832.
    • EngL 1016: Introduction: American Literature.
    • EngL 1018: Introduction: Modern Fiction.
    • EngL 3008: Techniques of Literary Study.
    • EngL 3060H: Junior-Senior Seminar: Hawthorne.
    • EngL 3241 and 3241H: Shakespeare.
    • EngL 3411, 3412, 3413: American Literature (survey).
    • EngL 3455: American Short Story.
    • EngL 3561: Poetry.
    • EngL 3718: Practical Criticism.
    • EngL 3910H: Honors Seminar: Continental European Backgrounds to the American Romantic Tale.
    • EngL 3920: Topics: Romantic Prose Fiction.
    • EngL 3931-3932: English Quarter: British and American Fiction of the 19th Century.
    • EngL 3940: Figures: Thoreau and Whitman.
    • EngL 5431, 5432, 5433: American Poetry.
    • EngL 5451, 5452: American Novel.
    • EngL 5541: Emerson and Thoreau.
    • EngL 5543: Hawthorne and Melville.
    • EngL 5545: Whitman and Twain.
    • EngL 5753: Literature and the Other Arts.
    • EngL 5910: Topics: Literatures of the American Prairies.
    • EngL 5920: Topics: Allegory.
    • EngL 8011: Introduction to Advanced Literary Study.
    • EngL 8012: Problems in Literary History and Genre.
    • EngL 8050: Studies in Special Subjects: Allegory (seminar).
    • EngL 8050: Studies in Special Subjects: Literary Uses of the Visual Arts in 19th Century  America (seminar).
    • EngL 8050: Visual Arts Forms in Fiction (seminar).
    • EngL 8118: Proseminar in 19th-Century American Literature.
    • EngL 8119: Proseminar in 20th-Century American Literature.
    • EngL 8530: Studies in 19th-Century American Literature: Hawthorne (seminar).
    • EngL 8530: Studies in 19th-C. American Literature: Thoreau's Aesthetic (seminar).
    • EngL 8530: Studies in 19th-C. American Literature: Rewriting Hawthorne in the Late 20th-Century (seminar).
    • EngL 8540: Transendentalism (seminar, substituting for T. Hornberger).
    • EngL 8610: Studies in 20th-C. British and American Literature: Cather (seminar).
    • EngL 8610: Studies in 20th-C. British and American Literature: Reader Response (seminar).
    • LS 5001: The American Prairies as Landscape.
    • LS 8000: Introduction to Graduate Liberal Studies (seminar).
    • LS 8001: The Final Project in Graduate Liberal Studies.

Other Activities

  • Member, Screening Commitee for National Endowment for the Humanities, 2001
  • Director, Curriculum and Undergraduate Studies, 1999-2000
  • Chair, Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs, 1997-1999 
  • Ex officio, Senate and Faculty Consultative Committees, 1997-1999 
  • Chair, Senate Joint Committee on Faculty Appointments, 1997-
  • Member, Screening Committee for Fulbright Awards to Central Europe, 1997-
  • Visiting Professor, University of Salzburg, 1996-1997 
  • Organizer, Fifth Annual Convention of MELUS [Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States], University of Minnesota, 11-13 April 1991.
  • Member, Discipline Screening Committee [for Fulbright Awards] in American Literature, Council for International Exchange of Scholars, 1989-92.
  • Co-organizer, Modern Language Association Conference on "The Future of Doctoral Studies in English," Spring Hill Conference Center, Wayzata, Minnesota, 2-5 April 1987.
  • Consultant, Macalester College English Department, 1986.
  • CIC English Chairs Association, 1985-88.
  • Advisory Board, Cultural Critique, 1985-1990.
  • Executive Committee, MLA Division on 19th-Century American Literature, 1978-82. (Secretary 1980, Chair 1981).

 

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