Timothy G. Keane
Professor
English
EMAIL: tkeane@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office: N-772
Office Hours: Blackboard/Online Tues 2-3PM, Wed 12-1PM & Fri 12-1PM
Phone: +1 (212) 220-8272
Tim Keane’s research and writing investigates the intersection between mid-20th century literature and abstract art as well as the influence of European and American Modernism on 20th century popular music. His articles have been published in Joe Brainard’s Art (University of Edinburgh Press 2019), Irish Urban Fictions (Springer International 2019), Abstract Expressionist Women of the Ninth Street Show (The Katonah Museum of Art, 2019), Studies in Visual Communication, The Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, Le Persil and ebr: Electronic Book Review.
As journalist and critic, he covers groundbreaking cultural publications and exhibitions about mid-20th century aesthetics, philosophies and creative practices, exploring their relevance to ongoing political and social dilemmas , having published in The Brooklyn Rail, The London Magazine, Modern Painters, Utne Reader, Vision China, Kamera (UK), The Reader (UK), American Book Review, and Rain Taxi; as a Contributing Writer to Hyperallergic Weekend, his datelines include Belfast and San Diego, Amsterdam and New Orleans, Paris and San Francisco, and many other locales.
Also a creative writer and visual artist, he has received grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and The Bronx Council on the Arts. He is the author of a full-length poetry collection Alphabets of Elsewhere (Cinnamon Press, 2007), and his poems and stories have been in magazines such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Evergreen Review, Rosebud, Denver Quarterly, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, and Poetry New Zealand and anthologized in Obey Little, Resist Much: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil 2017), Eclectica: Best Fiction (Eclectica Publishing, 2016), and Futures Trading: Anthology 2 (2015); his collaborative translations of modern French poetry have been published in Drunken Boat, Metamorphoses, Cerise Press, Silk Road, Le Persil, and Circumference. Recently, his paintings exhibited in Dúchas: The Drive Within, at Queens College, CUNY, and his drawings and photography have appeared in print and online journals.
Expertise
Late Modernism; Europe 1925-1945; postwar New York 1945-1965; abstract art and modern poetry; popular music and Modernist poetics [1930s-mid-1970s]; Modernism and political and social concerns around globalization, hyper-gentrification, urban spaces. and human rights. Poetry & visual art.
Degrees
- Ph.D. CUNY Graduate Center, Comparative Literature,2011
- M.Phil, CUNY Graduate Center, Comparative Literature 2009
Courses Taught
- This course will introduce the student to autobiography in the context of literary debate: why do we read autobiography? How do we classify autobiography, as non-fiction or fiction? Works by both men and women of many cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds will be included. Students will examine the various styles, elements, as well as the recurring themes in autobiography, while working on their own "reflection of the self. Pre-Requisite: ENG101 and ENG201 or ENG121
- This course provides further opportunities for students to explore journalism. Students conduct interviews, cover stories around the city and write journalistic articles. Opportunities are provided for specialized coverage in areas such as politics, consumerism, science, education, finance, the arts, social change and family life. Topics include layout, headline composition and basics of journalism law.
- The objective of this course is to sharpen students' creative writing skills in the genres of the short story, poetry and drama, depending on students' interests and ability. Pre-Requisite: ENG121 or ENG201
- This course will study and analyze selected novels, short stories, poems and plays of postcolonial writers from Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, the English speaking Caribbean, New Zealand, Canada and Australia. The course will examine the ways in which postcolonial writers transcend a British imperial legacy of colonialism to redefine their own distinctive social and cultural worlds. Note: This course is crosslisted as: AFL 336.
- European social and political ideas as they are reflected in the works of such novelists as Gide, Silone, Koestler, Camus, Sartre, Mann, and Kafka are examined and analyzed. Prerequisites: ENG 101 and 201, or ENG 121
- Students placed in ENG 100.5 are offered extra support, afforded through additional instructional time. Students completing ENG 100.5 will have mastered the fundamentals of college-level reading and writing, including developing a thesis-driven response to the writing of others and following the basic conventions of citation and documentation. They will have practiced what Mike Rose calls the "habits of mind" necessary for success in college and in the larger world: summarizing, classifying, comparing, contrasting, and analyzing. Students will be introduced to basic research methods and MLA documentation and complete a research project. Students are required to take a departmental final exam that requires the composition of a 500 word thesis-driven essay in conversation with two texts. Successful completion of this course is equivalent to passing ENG 101.
Prerequisite: English Proficiency Index of 64 and lower or a score of 43-55 on the CAT-W and exemption from ACR 95 or successful completion of ACR 95. This course is not open to ESL students.
Please note: Tuition for this corequisite course is charged by the equated credit (hours) not per credit. - English Composition is the standard freshman writing course. The course introduces students to academic writing. By its conclusion, students will be ready for English 201 and for the writing they will be asked to do in advanced courses across the curriculum. Students completing ENG 101 will have mastered the fundamentals of college-level reading and writing, including developing a thesis-driven response to the writing of others and following the basic conventions of citation and documentation. They will have practiced what Mike Rose calls the "habits of mind" necessary for success in college and in the larger world: summarizing, classifying, comparing, contrasting, and analyzing. Students will be introduced to basic research methods and MLA documentation and complete a research project. Students are required to take a departmental final exam that requires the composition of a 500 word, thesis-driven essay in conversation with two designated texts. Prerequisite: Pass the CAT-R and CAT-W or Accuplacer tests
Research and Projects
Intersection of Visual Art & Poetry 1930s-1970s; Postwar New York; Popular Music & Poetics
Publications
Peer-Reviewed
“Companions in Revolution: The Art of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock’s Circle” catalog essay for Creative Exchanges May 4-July 30, 2023 at The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, 2023 [catalog published by Pollock Krasner House and Study Center/Stony Brook University]
“The Memoir of Disappearance: Joe Brainard’s Bolinas Journal.” Joe Brainard’s Art, ed., Yasmine Shama (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2019), hardcover print
“Phantasmal Belfast, Ancient Languages, Modern Aura in Ciaran Carson’s The Star Factory.” Irish Urban Fictions by ed. Maria Belville, Deirdre Flynn (Springer International, 2019) hardcover, print.
“ ‘More Like a Poem’ : Literary Crosscurrents in the Ninth Street Painters.” Sparkling Amazons: Abstract Expressionist Women of the 9th Street Show (2019). The Katonah Museum of Art [catalogue funded by grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation] print
“’No Real Assurances’: George Schneeman’s Collaborations with New York School Poets and the Poetics of Modernism” Studies in Visual Arts and Communications , Vol 1, No 2 (2014) ISSN 2393-1221
“Being an Animal on 9/11: Reinterpreting Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘The Panther’ and ‘The Eighth Elegy.” Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, Special Issue on Animal Studies. Vol III, 2013. ISSN 2350-7020 [double blind peer review]
“Blank Page,” “What Room” Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation (Smith College, 2013), [translations of Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis, co-authored with Myriam Moraz]
“Playing the Blues: Pete Townshend’s Who I Am and Pop Music as Experimental Autobiography.” electronic book review, 2013, ISSN: 1553-1139
“Like A Cry” Circumference (Circumference Books), 2012, [translation of Swiss poet Pierre Chapuis co-authored with Myriam Moraz].
“Faire connaître la poésie suisse romande outre-Atlantique: Lausanne-New York aller-retour” [essay on translation, co-authored by Myriam Moraz], “Scree,” [translation of Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis], co-authored with Myriam Moraz,Le Persil (University of Lausanne, 2012). “Scree,” published in Cerise Press 2.4 (Summer 2010).
“Noonday,” “October Morning in Chavornay” Silk Road Review (Stockton: Pacific University, 2009) [translations of poems by Pierre Tâche; co-authored with Myriam Moraz]
“Life Sentences for the New America: Teaching Writing in Prisons,” ebr: The Electronic Book Review, October 2006 ISSN: 1553-1139
“Above Us Only Sky: On Camus, U2, Lennon, and Rilke” ebr: The Electronic Book Review March 2005 ISSN: 1553-1139
“Entre Chien et Loup: Jean Genet’s Prisoner of Love” ebr: The Electronic Book Review, January 2004, ISSN: 1553-1139
“God Help Us: Malise Ruthven’s A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America” ebr: The Electronic Book Review, March 2004, ISSN: 1553-1139
“A Poetry of Noesis: Joseph McElroy’s Women & Men” ebr: The Electronic Book Review [critical ecologies], 2004, ISSN: 1553-1139
Feature Journalism 2018-2022
[review board-edited, Hyperallergic Weekend]
“The Modernist Poet Who Took on Colonialism,” New York, February 2021
“Joan Mitchell, More Like a Poet,” San Francisco, April 2021
“The Poet Who Wrote the Way Abstract Expressionists Painted” New York, December 2020
“Albert Murray Talking Modernism, Race and Jazz” New York, September, 2020
“Memoir as the Fragments of Memory,” New York, June 2020
“An Unconventional Art Critic of La Belle Époque” Paris, May, 2020
“What Alberto Giacometti Learned from Marquis de Sade,” Paris, January, 2020
“Piet Mondrian Before Abstraction” Paris, January, 2020
“The Unsparing Pages of Francis Bacon,” Paris, December, 2019
“Seeing Ourselves in a Chimpanzees Art,” London, December, 2019
“Positively Ninth Street Women,” Katonah, New York, October, 2019
“Berenice Abbott’s Optimistic Modernity,” Madrid, August, 2019
“Lee Krasner’s Second Act” August,” London, August, 2019
“Lee Krasner’s Early Prophecies,” London, August, 2019
“The Contrarian Modernism of Fairfield Porter,” New York, May, 2019
“Leonor Fini’s Erotic Theater,” New York, February, 2019
“Elisabeth Frink’s Human Bestiary,” Norwich, England, February, 2019
“British Rock Meets Modernism,” Bath, England January 2019
“The Presidential Portrait Revealed,” January 2019
“Photographing the Women of British Art,” London, January, 2019
“Bill Brandt’s British Reality Show,” London, January, 2019
“Art of Clay and Steel in the City of New Orleans,” New Orleans, November 2018
“Making American Labor Visible Again,” New Orleans, November 2018
“Louise Nevelson’s Graphic Art,” New York October 2018
“Marcel Proust’s Dream of Art,” New York, August 2018
“Van Gogh’s Japanese Idyll,” Amsterdam, June, 2018
“A Painter’s Extraterrestrial Journey Through the Light of Day,” New York, April 2018
“Photographing Northern Ireland’s Mean Streets,” Belfast, December 2017
“How August Sander and Otto Dix Recorded Fascism’s Rise,” Liverpool, October, 2017
“Walter Benjamin on How to Stop Worrying and Love Late Capitalism,” New York July, 2017
“The Heroes and Villains of New York’s Changing Cityscape,” New York, June, 2017
“America is Trembling: Jean Genet’s Answer to Donald Trump,” New York, January, 2017
“The Irish for Noh: The Masks of William Butler Yeats” New York, January 2017
“Bohemian Rhapsody The Love Songs of Franz Kafka” New York, October, 2016
“The Eternal Returns of Richard Pousette-Dart” October,” New York, October 2016
“A Poet’s Paintings Into & Out of the Void,” San Francisco, August 2016
“Stanley Boxer’s Fabricated Galaxies,” New York, May, 2016
“Graven Images and Desert Edens: The Art of Harry Sternberg,” San Diego, April, 2016
“Silence Like a Sense: Jake Berthot’s Visual Poetics,” New York, April 2016
“Painting is the Language of God: The Gospel According to Gustave Moreau” New York, March 2016
Visual Art & Published Poetry & Fiction 2015-2022
“Trio,” “Viscous,” “Sanguine” & “Whorl.” Dúchas: The Drive Within August 1-September 7 2018, Art Center of Benjamin Rosenthal Library, Queens College Irish Studies Program, CUNY [four paintings in an exhibition]
“Drawn into It,” Still Point Arts Quarterly 22, Shanti Arts (Summer 2016): 60-69 [autobiographical essay in print journal published with seven original drawings by author] ISBN 978-1941830703
“Greta Garbo’s Hair Was Made in Egypt” Eclectica Magazine: Best Fiction, V2., ed. Tom Dooley Eclectica Publishing LLC, 2016 ISBN 978-0-9968830-0-9 [fiction in print anthology; reprinted from Eclectica #7 (2010) [print journal]
“Last Song of the Reed Flute” and “Collateral” Obey Little, Resist Much (New York: Spuyten Duyvil Publishing Press, 2017) [poems in print anthology] ISBN 978-1944682323 [“Last Song…” originally published online, Evergreen Review118 (Summer, 2012).
“The Man with Norwegian Eyes” Rosebud 60 (Fall 2015): 101-110 [historical fiction/short story about French poet Arthur Rimbaud in Ireland: print journal] ASIN B00DUB33RI
“Cadenza” in Futures Trading: Anthology Two edited by Caleb Puckett (2015) ISBN 1508418450 [poetry; print anthology]
Honors, Awards and Affiliations
CUNY Fellowship Leave Award, Fall 2019-Spring 2020
CUNY Research Foundation Fellowship Award (Enhanced), 2017
BMCC Faculty Development Grant, 2015
CUNY Research Foundation Fellowship Award (Enhanced), 2014
CUNY Doctoral Student Research Grant (DSRG), 2010
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing, 2000
BRIO [Bronx Recognizes Its Own] Fellowship Award in Fiction, 1998
Additional Information
Invited Talks & Presentations
“Scholars Panel: The Women Painters of the Ninth Street Show,” November 9, 2019, The Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah New York
“Displaced Modernisms: Artists’ Spaces in Prewar Paris & Postwar Manhattan,” BMCC Faculty Forum, New York, New York, November 2017
“Frank Lima Memorial & Poetry Reading,” The Poetry Project of St. Marks Church, New York, New York, January 25 2016
“Jean Genet’s Interventions Among the Black Panthers, 1970” BMCC Faculty Forum, New York, New York, April 2 2012.
“Jean Genet at 100” [moderator] CLAGS: Center for LGBQT Studies, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, New York, February 2010
