Date Updated
8-2-2024
Department
English and Comparative Literature
Academic Rank
Professor Emeritus
Year Retired from SJSU
2019
Facebook or Website URL
CARO: The Lady Caroline Lamb Website
Educational Background
University of California, Los Angeles, English, Ph.D. 1981
Claremont Graduate University, Education, MA 1976
Amherst College, English, BA 1974
Dissertation Title
In and Out of Time: Eliot, Bergson, and American Literature
Teaching Experience
Elementary, Secondary, and College/University Teaching 1974-2019.
Administrative and Professional Experience
Chair of English, 1998-2003, 2012-2013.
Service
Director, Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies and Editor of the Steinbeck Review (1993-94, 2005-12, 2013-14)
Director of the Steinbeck Fellows Creative Writing Program (1999-2012, 2013-14)
Director of the Graduate Program, Department of English (2003-2006)
Director of the Central Coast California Literature Project, 1991-2003 (a regional teacher professional development program)
Member of various College and University-level Search, Curriculum, RTP Committees. Spearheaded inauguration of the MFA in Creative Writing Program.
Selected Publications
Books
The Romantics in Italy: Dante, Italian Culture, and Romantic Literature. Ed. and with an introduction and contributions by Frederick Burwick and Paul Douglass. New York: Palgrave, 2011.
T. S. Eliot, Dante, and the Idea of Europe.Ed. and with an introduction and a contribution by Paul Douglass. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/faculty_books/43/
The Claremont Graduate University: A History of Its Early Development, by Malcolm Paul Douglass. Ed. and with an afterword by Paul Douglass (his son). Claremont: CGU (Xlibris), 2010.
The Works of Lady Caroline Lamb. 3 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009. Ed. Paul Douglass and Leigh Wetherall Dickson. Nominated by the publisher for the 2011 MLA Prize for a Distinguished Scholarly Edition.
The Whole Disgraceful Truth: Selected Letters of Lady Caroline Lamb. New York and London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006. Ed. and with an introduction by Paul Douglass. Winner: 2007 International Byron Society Prize.
Lady Caroline Lamb: A Biography. New York and London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004.
The Crisis in Modernism: Bergson and the Vitalist Controversy. Cambridge UP, 1992. Paperback reissue, 2010. Ed. and with an introduction and contributions by Paul Douglass and Frederick Burwick.
A Selection of Hebrew Melodies, Ancient and Modern, by Isaac Nathan and Lord Byron, a facsimile edited and with an introduction and notes by Frederick Burwick and Paul Douglass. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1988.
Cradle of the Copperheads, a novel by Jesse Stuart. McGraw-Hill, 1988. Edited and with an introduction by Paul Douglass.
Bergson, Eliot, and American Literature. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1986.
Articles and Essays
Paul Douglass. "Martha Heasley Cox: February 26, 1919–September 5, 2015" Steinbeck Review Vol. 13 Iss. 1 (2016) p. 73 - 78 ISSN: 1546-007X
Paul Douglass. "[Review of] The Politics of Songs in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1723–1795; Literature and Music in the Atlantic World, 1767–1867" European Romantic Review Vol. 26 Iss. 4 (2015) p. 520 - 526 ISSN: 1050-9585
Paul Douglass. "Barth, Barthes, and Bergson: Postmodern Aesthetics and the Imperative of the New" Pacific Coast PhilologyVol. 47 (2012) p. 34 - 50 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/5/
Ria Grimbergen and Paul Douglass. "On a Special Copy of Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon Recently Discovered in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek" The Byron Journal Vol. 37 Iss. 2 (2009) p. 151 - 160 ISSN: 0301-7257 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/1/
Paul Douglass. "Twisty Little Passages: The Several Editions of Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon" The Wordsworth CircleVol. 40 Iss. 2 and 3 (2009) p. 77 - 82 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/16/
Paul Douglass. "Lady Caroline Lamb’s Revisions to Her Novel Glenarvon: Some Observations" Bulletin of the Byron Society in Australia Vol. 32 (2008) p. 31 - 38 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/18/
Paul Douglass. "An Interview With Corinne Cooke" The Steinbeck ReviewVol. 4 Iss. 1 (2007) ISSN: 1546-007X https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/2/
Paul Douglass. "An Interview With Dr. James D. Watson" The Steinbeck Review Vol. 4 Iss. 1 (2007) https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/3/
Paul Douglass. "An Unpublished Letter of Lord Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb" Notes and Queries (UK)Vol. 53 Iss. 3 (2006) p. 322 - 323 ISSN: 0029-3970 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/4/
Paul Douglass. “Young Caroline: A Medea in the Making?” A View in the Rear-Mirror: Romantic Aesthetics, Culture, and Science Seen from Today—Festschrift for Frederick Burwick on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday. Studien zur Englischen Romantik #3. Ed. Walter Pape. Trier: Wissenschftlicher Verlag Trier (2006) 73-88
Paul Douglass. "Lord Byron’s Feminist Canon: Notes Toward Its Construction" Romanticism on the NetVol. 43 (2006) ISSN: 1467-1255 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/19/
Paul Douglass. "Paradise Decomposed: Byron’s Decadence and Wordsworthian Nature in Childe Harold III and IV" The Byron JournalVol. 34 Iss. 1 (2006) p. 9 - 19 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/20/
Paul Douglass and Rosemary March. "That ‘Vital Spark of Genius’: Lady Caroline Lamb’s Writing Before Byron" Pacific Coast PhilologyVol. 41 (2006) p. 43 - 62 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/68/
Paul Douglass. "What Lord Byron Learned from Lady Caroline Lamb" European Romantic ReviewVol. 16 Iss. 3 (2005) p. 273 - 281 ISSN: 1050-9585 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/17/
Paul Douglass. "Lady Caroline Lamb Before Byron: The Godfrey Vassal Webster Affair" The Wordsworth CircleVol. 36 Iss. 3 (2005) p. 117 - 124 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/11/
Paul Douglass. "Isaac Nathan and Lady Caroline Lamb: A Response to Graham Pont" Newstead Abbey Byron Society Review(2004) p. 88 - 89 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/10/
Paul Douglass. "Eliot's Hulme—Or Pound's" ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews Vol. 13 Iss. 1 (2000) p. 23 - 28
Paul Douglass. "The Madness of Writing: Lady Caroline Lamb's Byronic Identity" Pacific Coast Philology(1999) https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/15/
Paul Douglass. "Deleuze, Cinema, Bergson" Social Semiotics Vol. 8 Iss. 1 (1998)
Paul Douglass. "Bionic Eye: The Resources and Limits of the Cinematic Apparatus" Pacific Coast PhilologyVol. 33 Iss. 2 (1997) https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/6/
Paul Douglass. "Playing Byron: Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon and the Music of Isaac Nathan" European Romantic Review Vol. 8 Iss. 1 (1997)
Paul Douglass. "Reading the Wreckage: De-Encrypting Eliot's Aesthetics of Empire" Twentieth Century LiteratureVol. 43 Iss. 1 (1997) https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/14/
Paul Douglass. "Deleuze and the Endurance of Bergson" Thought Vol. 67 (1992)
Paul Douglass. "Loose Canon on the Deck" Pacific Coast PhilologyVol. 24 Iss. 1-2 (1991) https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/12/
Paul Douglass. "Modernism and Science: The Case of Pound's ABC of Reading" PaideumaVol. 18 (1989) https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/13/
Paul Douglass. "Cradle of the Copperheads: Education and the Career of Jesse Stuart" Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies ReviewVol. 15 (1988) https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/7/
Paul Douglass. "Such as the Life Is, Such Is the Form: Organicism Among the Moderns" Approaches to Organic Form (1987)
Paul Douglass. "Hebrew Melodies as Songs: Why We Need a New Edition" The Byron Journal Vol. 14 (1986) https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/9/
Paul Douglass. "Isaac Nathan's Settings for Hebrew Melodies" English Romanticism: The Paderborn Symposium Vol. 1 (1985)
Paul Douglass. "The Gold Coin: Bergsonian Intuition and Modernist Aesthetics" Thought Vol. 58 (1983)
Paul Douglass. "Eliot's Cats: Serious Play Behind the Playful Seriousness" Children's Literature (1983): 109-24. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/eng_complit_pub/8/
Paul Douglass. "Opposition is True Friendship: Keeping Spirit and Body Together in the Writing Curriculum" Claremont Reading Conference Yearbook Vol. 46 (1982)
Contributions to Books
Drummond Bone and Paul Douglass. "Byron’s Life and His Biographers" Cambridge, UKThe Cambridge Companion to Byron (2004)
Paul Douglass. "'The Theory of Poetry Is the Theory of Life': Bergson and the Later Stevens" Critical Essays (1988)
Please see CV for unpublished papers. reviews, presentations and other publications through popular press.
Files
Download Curriculum Vitae (246 KB)
Personal Commentary
It was my great good fortune to be hired at SJSU in 1990, under the chairmanship of Jack Haeger, after the small college at which I was teaching in Atlanta (Mercer University) closed. I have greatly valued and deeply appreciated the many kindnesses I have received from my colleagues then and right through my retirement in 2019--especially thinking of those who were my senior colleagues of the 1990s, Cathy Blecki, John Pollock, George Grant, Arlene Okerlund, Lois Rew, Nils Peterson, Alan Soldofsky, Kichung Kim, Wil Crockett, Harvey Birenbaum, Don Keesey, Gabriele Rico, Scott Rice, Scott Hymas, Gene Bernardini, Chris Jochim, John Engell, Bonnie Cox, David Mesher, Sam Maio. As Chair, I was fortunate to work with wonderful staff, especially Admins Mark Bussmann and Brenda Wilhelm, and Deans Crane, Sigler, Toepfer and Vollendorf. These wonderful individuals made teaching at SJSU a joy above and beyond those I derived from working with our smart, ambitious, thoughtful students.
Copied from SelectedWorks Faculty Profile
Paul Douglass is Emeritus Professor of English and American Literature at San Jose State University, where he is the past Director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies and the Steinbeck Fellows Program. His research interests include British Romanticism (Byron Studies), Modern American Literature (Eliot and Steinbeck Studies), Literary Theory, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature-- through Music, Philosophy, and painterly aesthetics. He is the author of Lady Caroline Lamb: A Biography (Palgrave 2004), and co-editor, with Frederick Burwick, of a facsimile edition of Lord Byron and Isaac Nathan's A Selection of Hebrew Melodies, Ancient and Modern (University of Alabama Press, 1988). In 2007 he received the Elma Dangerfield Award of the International Byron Society for publication of new and original work related to the life, works and times of the 6th Lord George Gordon Noel Byron the Poet. In 2009 he was chosen as the President's Scholar of San Jose State University by President Jon Whitmore. His selection of Lady Caroline Lamb's letters, The Whole Disgraceful Truth, was published by Palgrave in April 2006. Together with Leigh Wetherall, he edited The Works of Lady Caroline Lamb, published by Pickering and Chatto in 2009. This and other publications and projects are listed below in his summary of Scholarly Activity. With Frederick Burwick (UCLA), he has also inaugurated a Romantic-Era Songs Web-Site dedicated to enabling scholars and music-lovers greater access to recordings of the Theater and Popular Songs, Catches, Airs, and Art Songs of the Romantic Period, including modern settings of Romantic-era lyrics