Research Area(s)
- American Literature
- Cultural Studies
- Nuclear Culture
- Travel Writing
- Science and Literature
About me
Lindsey Banco is the author of two books. The first, Travel and Drugs in Twentieth-Century Literature (2009), examines depictions of mobility and intoxication in the work of writers such as William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Aldous Huxley, and Alex Garland. The second, The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2016), explores representations of the Manhattan Project physicist in fiction, biography, history, film, television, museums, comic books, photographs, and other media. It examines how the science and technology of the atomic bomb are framed in a variety of cultural productions.
He has also published articles on Hunter S. Thompson, Alex Garland, Flannery O’Connor, Paul Auster, and Cormac McCarthy, as well as on drugs and contemporary travelogues, the biographies and the television appearances of Robert Oppenheimer, the 1983 made-for-TV nuclear war extravaganza The Day After, haunted house fiction, and conspiracy theory.
He has taught undergraduate courses on American literature, Gothic literature, short fiction, and cultural studies, as well as graduate seminars on American literature and culture.
He has supervised and is supervising a wide range of graduate projects, including ones on Philip K. Dick, Battlestar Galactica, Washington Irving, vampires, animals, Star Wars, atomic cinema, Douglas Coupland, James Bond, Breaking Bad, and comic books.
Publications
Books:
The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer. University of Iowa Press, 2016.
Travel and Drugs in Twentieth-Century Literature. Routledge, 2009.
Articles:
"Revelation, Secret Knowledge, and 9/11 Conspiracy Theory." Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture. Edited by John Hay. Cambridge University Press, 2020. 42-54.
"Graphic Bombs: Scientific Knowledge and the Manhattan Project in Comic Books." The Palgrave Handbook of 20th- and 21st-Century Literature and Science. Edited by The Triangle Collective. Palgrave, 2020. 577-595.
"Recession Horror: The Haunted Housing Crisis in Contemporary Fiction." Dark Forces at Work: Essays on Social Dynamics and Cinematic Horrors. Edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Lexington, 2020: 79-97.
"Magic Mushroom Clouds: The Atomic Bomb as American Psychotrope." Revue française d’études américaines 156 (2018): 18-30.
"Presenting Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer: Science, the Atomic Bomb, and Cold War Television." Journal of Popular Film and Television 45.3 (2017): 128-138.
"'Hiroshima is Peanuts': The Strange Landscape of The Day After." Arizona Quarterly 71.1 (2015): 101-128.
"The Biographies of J. Robert Oppenheimer: Desert Saint or Destroyer of Worlds." Biography 35.3 (2012): 492-515.
"La drogue et le journal de voyage contemporain." ["Drugs and the Contemporary Travelogue."] Drogues, santé et société 11.1 (2012): 1-18.
"Contractions in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road." The Explicator 68.4 (2010): 276-279.
"Mapping Authorship: Overhead Cartography in Paul Auster's City of Glass." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 36.4 (2009): 381-398.
"The 'Peculiar Glare of Recognition': Drunkenness and the Southern Gothic in Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away." Gothic Studies 11.2 (2009): 63-73.
"Trafficking Trips: Drugs and the Anti-Tourist Novels of Hunter S. Thompson and Alex Garland." Studies in Travel Writing 11.2 (2007): 127-53.
Book Reviews:
Review of Sarah Daw, Writing Nature in Cold War American Literature, 2018. Journal of American Studies 54.1 (2020): 265-266.
Review of Wendy Harding, The Myth of Emptiness and the New American Literature of Place, 2014. American Literary History. The ALH Online Review Series. Vol. VIII. October 2016. http://oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/alhist/alhreview_series8.html
Other Publications:
“On FRAGILE SAFARI.” PAVED Meant Vol. 3. Saskatoon, SK: PAVED Arts. 2020.
"Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men." The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 2016. http://www.litencyc.com
"Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing." The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 2016. http://www.litencyc.com
"Cormac McCarthy's The Road." The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 2011. http://www.litencyc.com/
Teaching & Supervision
Lindsey Banco has taught undergraduate courses on American literature, Gothic literature, short fiction, and cultural studies, as well as graduate seminars on American literature and culture.
He has supervised and is supervising a wide range of graduate projects, including ones on Philip K. Dick, Battlestar Galactica, Washington Irving, vampires, animals, Star Wars, atomic cinema, Douglas Coupland, James Bond, Breaking Bad, and comic books.
Research
Cultural Studies Literature United States culture film nuclear science
Lindsey Banco is the author of two books. The first, Travel and Drugs in Twentieth-Century Literature (2009), examines depictions of mobility and intoxication in the work of writers such as William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Aldous Huxley, and Alex Garland. The second, The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2016), explores representations of the Manhattan Project physicist in fiction, biography, history, film, television, museums, comic books, photographs, and other media. It examines how the science and technology of the atomic bomb are framed in a variety of cultural productions.
He is interested in the relationships between literature and science and technology, and works on how those relationships construct knowledge and identity. He enjoys working on canonical American literature and, equally, varieties of representational modes and disciplines. His work spans a range of modern, postmodern, and contemporary literatures, forms, and issues, and uses multiple theoretical and methodological approaches.