Robert Lapp
Biography
Dr. Lapp teaches three periods of British Literature: the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1660-1780); Romanticism (1780-1830); and Victorian Literature (1830-1900). He also teaches literary history, poetry and poetics, and the new subdiscipline of ecopoetics. His current research passion is to develop a new anthology of ecopoetry along with a "manifesto" for the role of poetry in meeting the challenges of the Anthropocene.
As a 3M National Teaching Fellow, https://3mcouncil.stlhe.ca/resources/3m-fellows/award-winners/2008lapp/, Dr. Lapp is active in Educational Leadership, including serving as President of the STLHE from 2014 to 2017 https://www.stlhe.ca/blog/past-presidents/robert-lapp/#more-19836. He currently serves as Co-chair of the Teaching and Learning Committee of the Maple League of Universities http://mapleleague.ca.
Dr. Lapp is also the recipient of the AAU Distinguished Teacher Award (2003) and Mount Allison's Herbert and Leota Tucker Teaching Award (2003).
Dr. Lapp is a strong advocate for the theory and practice of the public performance of literature and enjoys giving performances of literary works at community events and on local media. Since the fall of 2017, he has been reading one poem a week as the Monday "Poetry Lover" on CBC NB Radio One Shift. Recordings of these readings are available at https://warktimes.com under "Poetry Recordings" and "More Poetry Recordings."
Memberships
Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment https://www.asle.org/
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism https://www.nassr.ca
Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English https://accute.ca
Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education https://www.stlhe.ca
Publications
Selected Publications
Contest for Cultural Authority: Hazlitt, Coleridge, and the Distresses of the Regency. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. [PR 4484 L37 1999] https://www.amazon.ca/Contest-Cultural-Authority-Robert-Keith/dp/0814328334
"Authorship in Eighteen Hundred and Eleven : An Integral Approach." English Studies in Canada 38.2 (June 2012): 49-70.
"Gateways in Higher Education: the STLHE Comes to Halifax," Focus on University Teaching and Learning 25.1 (June 2017). https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/dept/clt/Focus/Vol25No1.pdf
"Romanticism Repackaged: New Faces of 'Old Man' Coleridge" in Fraser's Magazine , 1830-32" European Romantic Review 11:2 (Spring 2000). ERR_Romanticism repackaged The new faces of old man Coleridge in Fraser's Magazine 1830-35
"My First Acquaintance with Critics." The New Quarterly 117 (Spring 2011). TNQ_Essay Proofs
Review of Anna Laetitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment by William McCarthy. Religion in the Age of Enlightenment 2 (2010). Review of McCarthy in RAE
“The Englishman’s Magazine.” Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism. Ed Laurel Brake and Marysa Denmoor. London: Academia Press and the British Library, 2009.
“‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ (William Wordsworth)." Companion to Literary Romanticism. NY: Facts on File, 2009.
“‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (John Keats).” Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. NY: Facts on File, 2010.
“‘A Summer Evening’s Meditation’ (Anna Laetitia Barbauld).” Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. New York: Facts on File, 2010.
“The Swing Riots.” Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. New York: Facts on File, 2010.
Education
B.A. (University of Toronto, 1978)
M.A. (University of Toronto, 1985)
Ph.D. (Dalhousie University, 1997)
Teaching
Courses Taught
Literature, the Arts and Humanities
Introduction to the Principles of Literary Analysis
Introduction to Poetry
Literary Periods to 1800
Literary Periods, 1800-Present
Restoration and Augustan Literature
Literature of the Enlightenment
Literature in the Age of Romanticism
Regency Literature
Early Victorian Literature
Late Victorian Literature
Literature and the Natural World
4000-level seminar courses taught:
Ecopoetics (Winter 2020)
Transatlantic Romanticism (Winter 2016)
Romantic Ecology (Winter 2012)
The Night in Literature (Fall 2007)
Literary Representations of the 1830s (Fall 2005)
Prose of the 1820s (Winter 2003)
Literature of the 1830s (Winter 2001)
Recent Honours Theses, Independent Studies, and Summer Research Supervisions
Cecilia Stuart, "She Has Seeds under Her Tongue: Biosemiotic Ecofeminism in Canadian Women's Poetry" (Honours Thesis, 2017-18)
Renée Belliveau, "Disruptive Heroines: Transatlantic Proto-feminism in the 1860s Sensation Fiction of Mary E. Braddon & Louisa M. Alcott" (Honours Thesis, 2016-17)
Victoria Vallière, "Faith in Literature: A Post-secular Approach" (Honours Thesis, 2016-17)
Miriam Farhloul, "Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Ethical Imagination" (Summer Research Supervision, 2014)
Amber Tucker, The Tradition of Radical Poetics in Blake, Shelley, Whitman, and Ginsberg" (Honours Thesis, 2013-14)
Sean McDonell, "The Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells" (Summer Research Superivision, 2013)
Brigitte Desroches, "Traversing the In-between: Encountering Liminal Spaces in Medieval and Romantic Literatures" (Summer Research Supervision, 2013)
Sean McDonell, "A Handbook for Writers: Elements of Literary Composition" (Summer Research Supervision, 2012)
Caroline Wong, "How the Tories Stole Carnival: Folk Culture in Post-Interregnum Satire" (Summer Research Supervision, 2012)
Bernard Soubry, "Grappling with Gyres: Yeat's Poetry and the Tension of Eras", Co-supervised with Dr. Peter Brown (Independent Studies Supervision, 2012)
Ashley Steeves and Thomas Woodbury, Children's Literature, 1800-Present (Independent Studies Supervision, 2010)
Research
Dr. Lapp's current research is focused on Romantic and neo-Romantic ecopoetics, and in particular on drawing together biosemiotics, the new materialism (including David Bohm's "Implicate Order"), and the process panentheism of David Ray Griffin as the metaphysical foundation for a viable "post-Enlightenment" ecopoetics. The aim is to create both a "manifesto" for ecopoetics and a fresh anthology of ecopoetry for use in the classroom.
Traditional authors included in this anthology: Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Robbie Burns, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, John Clare, Emily Brontë, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Thomas Hardy. Modern and Contemporary authors include Robert Frost, Maxine Kumin, Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, Les Murray, Don McKay, Sheryl St. Germain, Baba Brinkman, El Jones, Steven Heighton and Marilyn Lerch.
In June 2019, he will deliver a paper to the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment entitled "Cooked in Wet Fires of Decay": Biosemiotics and the Articulation of the Non-human in Les Murray's "Translations from the Natural World."
Grants, awards & honours
3M National Teaching Fellowship, 2008
J. E. A. Crake Teaching Award in the Arts (Mount Allison University), 2005
Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU) Distinguished Teacher Award, 2003
Herbert and Leota Tucker Teaching Award (Mount Allison University), 2003