Stephen Casmier, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Research Interests
Stephen Casmier's research unites his interest in race theory with his background as a newspaper journalist. His current work explores how African American writers stage the tension between journalism and fiction in their work through actual imbedded newspaper stories. His book manuscript (provisionally titled, Bewitching the Word: The Press, Race and African American Literature) analyzes how African American novels and narratives confront what one historian calls the "fictiveness" of the daily newspaper, its construction of identity and its support of racial hegemony.
Publications and Media Placements
While teaching at Saint Louis University, Casmier has also continued to contribute
articles to newspapers and magazines such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Ishmael
Reed's Internet magazine Conch. Casmier is a reader for African American Review and Contemporary Literature.
Articles
"The Funky Novels of John Edgar Wideman: Odor and Ideology in Reuben, Philadelphia Fire and The Cattle Killing." Critical Essays on John Edgar Wideman. Eds. Bonnie TuSmith and Keith Byerman. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005.
"A Speck of Coal Dust: Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin and the Possibilities of Translation." Nabokov Studies 8 (2003/2004). Nabokov Studies 8 (2004): 71-86.
"Race, Newspapers and Hegemony in Banjo by Claude McKay." Cross Perspectives on African Americans: Celebrating Michel Fabre. Ed. Claude Julien. Tours, France: Presses Universitaire François Rabelais (2003): 177-188.
"Resisting the Frame Up -- Philadelphia Fire and the Liberated Voices of Ramona Africa and Margaret Jones." Cycnos 19.2 (2002): 1-16.
"Ventriloquism and Ideology in Ken Burn's Jazz." The Moving Image: Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists [University of Minnesota Press] 2 (2001): 172-176.
"Un terrain d'entente: L'esthétique du jazz et les trois derniers romans de John Edgar Wideman." Postcolonial Knitting: the Art of Jacqueline Bardolph. Eds. Richard Corballis and André Viola. Palmerston North [New Zealand] & Nice [France]: Massey University/Université de Nice, 2000. 149-153.
"Why Scatting and Speaking in Tongues are Alike: Jazz and Glossolalia as Non-mimetic, Postmodernist Expressions of Afromysticism." With Donald Matthews. Literature and Theology: An-International Journal of Theory, Criticism and Culture [Oxford University Press] 13.2 (1999): 166-176.
"Black Narcissus: Representation, Reproduction, Repetition and Seeing Yourself in V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas and The Enigma of Arrival." Commonwealth: Essays and Studies 18.1 (1995): 92 - 105.
Ettema, James S. and David L. Protess with Stephen Casmier. Uncovering Race: Press Coverage of Racial Issues in Chicago. The Institute for Modern Communications, Northwestern University, Research Monographs, juin 1989.
Other Work
"MJ as Peter Pan." Ishmael Reed's KONCH magazine. March - April, 2004. (http://www.ishmaelreedpub.com/konch.html)
"Ali and Elvis." St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Thursday, December 27, 2002, B7.
"Reflection on Austria, Haider and James Baldwin." St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Sunday, February 13, 2000, B3.
"Lester Bowie restructured jazz." St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Friday, November 19, 1999, C19.
"When Some of Our Children Aren't Safe, No One is Safe." St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Tuesday, April 27, 1999, B13.
Chagall and the Bible. Exhibit Catalogue. Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale. February 6-April 12, 1998. Trad.: Roswitha Zahlner-Casmier, Janice Matthew-Olivetti, Toussaint Olivetti and Stephen Casmier.
"Interview with Lester Bowie," Eyeball, Vol. 3, St. Louis, 1993.
Casmier, Stephen, "The Fundamentals of Cool." Interview with Ahmad Jamal, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday, May 30, 1993.
"East of the Sun featuring saxophonist Lin Halliday." Liner notes. Delmark Records, DE-458, 1992.
"Watering down the 'X.'" Review of the film Malcolm X, New Orleans Times Picayune, Spring 1992.
"Rising from the Ashes." Review of Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman, New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 21, 1990.
Casmier, Stephen, "Lin Halliday Means It." Interview with saxophonist Lin Halliday. New City Journal, September 27 - October 3, 1990, p. 23.
"Two distinct voices make sweet harmony." Interview with Quincy Troupe, New Orleans Times Picayune, Sunday, January 14, 1990.