Craig Tapping

• B.A. (British Columbia)
• H.Dip.Litt., Ph. D. (Trinity College Dublin)

Post-Colonial Studies (Commonwealth literature, orality, multiculturalism, film); Gay and Lesbian studies; Cultural Studies (popular culture, mass media).

C.V.

I am interested in Poetry—from anywhere and in every shape or form;  Poetics and Theory; International contemporary Drama;  World Literatures—forms and difference after Empire; Gay and Lesbian Cultural Studies; Psychoanalytical Theory and the Arts. 

I have taught in Vancouver, Nigeria and Ireland.  At VIU, I try to balance principles of gradual, integral gains in skills training with open discussions and debate.  I look for all kinds of tricks and devices to ensure that everyone participates.

Two things inspire my pedagogy:  the old dream of “rhapsodic intelligence” and (reading Yeats’s “Among Schoolchildren”) the hope that we can learn, and thus blossom, “without bruising the soul.”

Reading and thinking, talking and writing enrich all our lives—this is the dialogue of humanity, our stories and our shared traditions.  As William Carlos Williams wrote:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems,
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there. 

I read newspapers and poetry, and write critically about that reading.  Currently, I am researching “post-colonial” drama, for a study which argues, with classroom examples, that such “different” theatre is really very accessible to most students, anywhere/everywhere.  I have published widely, but like gardening better.