English Professor Published in Wallace Stevens Journal

"Freud, Modernity, and the 'Father Nucleus' in Wallace Stevens," an essay written by Dr. Bethany Hicok, Westminster College associate professor of English, was published in a special issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal.

In the 1930s and early 1940s, many modern writers turned to what they considered to be two key problems of their age-religious fundamentalism and the rise of totalitarianism-as Hitler marched across Europe, Stalin took power in Russia, and Mussolini and the fascists ruled in Italy. Wallace Stevens, an American poet, was no exception.

Hicok's article focuses on Stevens' reading of Freud's essay The Future of an Illusion, where Freud applies his psychoanalytic theories to wider cultural questions. Hicok's essay examines the intersection between the cultural Freud and the cultural Stevens, providing an important hinge on which to hang a discussion of how Stevens and Freud were thinking through some of the key questions that concerned both men.

"My purpose here is to show the ways that Freud's essay provided an essential framework for Stevens' thinking about both the search for belief and the dangers of totalitarianism and how Stevens 'writes' through these issues in his poetry of this period," Hicok said.

Hicok, who joined the Westminster faculty in 2001, earned an undergraduate degree from Russell Sage College and two masters and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. She is the author of Degrees of Freedom: American Women Poets and the Women's College, 1905-1955. She has published articles on Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens, contributed chapters to two books, and delivered papers on American poetry at professional conferences.

Contact Hicok at (724) 946-6349 or e-mail hicokbf@westminster.edu for additional information.

Dr. Bethany Hicok