Joyce, Steven 1950- (Steven James Joyce)

PERSONAL:

Born December 13, 1950, in Green Bay, WI; married October 29, 1983; wife's name Mary T. (a lecturer in French); children: Alexander, Genevieve, Brendan. Ethnicity: "Irish/German American (Caucasian)." Education: Attended University of Santa Maria, Arequipa, Peru, 1972-73; St. Norbert College, B.A. (cum laude), 1973; attended Lawrence University, 1974-75; Purdue University, M.A., 1980; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ph.D., 1983. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Soccer, skiing, writing.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Mansfield, OH. Office—317 Ovalwood, Ohio State University, 1680 University Dr., Mansfield, OH 44906. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Ohio State University, Mansfield, associate professor of German, 1987—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fulbright awards, 1987, 1992, 1996.

WRITINGS:

Transformations and Texts: G.B. Shaw's "Buoyant Billions," Camden House (Columbia, SC), 1988.

Contributor to books, including East-Central European Traumas and a Millennial Condition, edited by Zbigniew Bialas and Wieslaw Karjka, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1999; and Alchemization of the Mind: Literature and Dissociation, edited by Zbigniew Bialas and Krzysztof Kowalczyk-Twarowski, Peter Lang (Frankfurt, Germany), 2003. Contributor of articles and poetry to periodicals, including Red River Review, Kimera: Journal of Fine Writing, Minimus, International Quarterly, Romanic Review, Seminar: Journal of Germanic Studies, Comparatist, Independent Shavian, New Germanic Studies, and International Journal of the Humanities.

SIDELIGHTS:

Steven Joyce told CA: "I tend to write to attempt to express what seems to be just beyond the reach of articulation. I have written a small book of poetry in addition to the more academic articles that focus on German literature and in particular Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard and German writer Judith Hermann. The book of poetry is really a kind of academic aside—a way of overcoming the feeling of disconnectedness as well as a means of bringing a kind of order to the disorder of lived life. The success of this is less important than the activity itself, which at some point becomes a kind of necessity with cathartic results.

"When I write academic articles, I tend to revise often and look to seek the correct expression as well as the apt phrase and lilting rhythm. My tendency is to overload sentences with meaning by way of making the sentence speak more to its expressive purpose. However, I have to say that writing itself, while on the one hand therapeutic, also poses dangers, especially if it becomes obsessive and solipsistic. Literary history bears this out more or less, but personal experience does likewise.

"I have chosen Thomas Bernhard as the focus of my scholarly work because he enacts what I believe is the purpose of literature, and that is in accord with the Latin dictum that literature be both pleasing and didactic. Bernhard has been a literary pariah in Austria for years and to some extent continues to be so. However, he remains that voice of Socratic criticism that forces both society and individual to undergo oftentimes painful self-examination in order to ‘correct’ and realign oneself to the truth."