James Postema
Associate Professor of English

American Literature:   

My dissertation explored temporal structures in Robert Frost's lyric poems, focusing on the poems that create a sense of timelessness, and how this effect relates to the discursive nature of lyric poetry.  After working on other projects for several years, I returned to my studies of Frost while on sabbatical for Winter/Spring 2006.  I was very please to be able to immerse myself once again in his writings, and in criticism of his work.  But I was also dissatisfied to see how little things had changed in the fifteen years since my dissertation--very few studies in the last 10-15 years worked from bases in recent theoretical discussions of literature or American Studies.  There is much work to be done--and I am refining my approaches in order to do some of that work.

I have an article under consideration at a scholarly journal, on the Icelandic Grœnlendinga Saga, or "Greenlanders' Saga, and the ways in which it sets up conflicting views of the first contact between Europeans and Americans, privileging a specifically Christian ideology over both indigenous and even traditional Viking worldviews.

I've submitted a paper proposal titled "'A Slough Runs Through It':  Colonization, Despair, Garrison Keillor, and the Prairie Home Cemetery," based in part on my research on the diary of the Reverend Oscar Elmer (see below).

The Reverend Oscar Elmer: 
first minister in the Fargo-Moorhead area 

Oscar Elmer preached the first sermons ever heard in Moorhead, Fargo, Grand Forks, and several other towns in this area.  He founded the First Presbyterian Church of Moorhead and was instrumental in starting the Moorhead Public Schools, the town's first hospital, and the YMCA, among other accomplishments.  

Elmer also helped found the Prairie Home Cemetery, thereby influencing the world indirectly through Garrison Keillor; in its early days The Prairie Home Companion was broadcast from Concordia College, and the Cemetery just across the street provided the name for Keillor's famous radio show.  Listen to a Prairie Home Companion broadcast featuring my research [Segment 2, October 9, 2004]  

I am working on publishing Elmer's journal.  An article on Elmer's years in Sauk Centre, Minnesota (1869-1871), appeared in the Summer 2004 issue of The Journal of Presbyterian History, a juried academic periodical.  I'm currently editing and researching the diary entries written during Elmer's time in Moorhead.

Family History:   
Postema, Eising, Kaashoek, Ribbens, and many other Dutch surnames