Bruce Edward Fleming

Department of English
United States Naval Academy
Annapolis, Maryland  21402
Ph/fax:  4l0. 293-6219
fleming@usna.edu
Professor of English, U.S. Naval Academy (Assistant, Associate), 1987-present
Fulbright Professor of Anglo-American Literature, National University of Rwanda, 1985-87
Lecturer, English Seminar, University of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1983-85
 
 

Education

Ph.D.  Vanderbilt University.  May 1982; Comparative Literature.
M.A.   University of Chicago.  June 1978; Comparative Literature.
B.A.     Haverford College.  May1974; Philosophy.
Diploma, Corso superiore. University of Siena Scuola per stranieri; Summer 1982.
    Fulbright Fellow, Free University Berlin, 1982-83.
Graduate Course in “Strategy and Policy,” U.S. Naval War College School of Continuing Education, 2000-2001.
     Student in Romance languages, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, 1978-79.
     Student, New York University in Paris, summer 1972.
Student, Honors Program, University of Maryland at College Park 1971-72.
 

Teaching Positions

     Professor, Department of English, United States Naval Academy  Previously Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, 1987-present.
Courses in European Novel, Modernism, Drama, Film,  Romanticism, Creative Writing, Western Civilization, Islamic Lit., Literary Theory, Western views of Africa and India (and the reverse), and Introductory Freshman Lit.

Fulbright Lecturer/Professor, National University of Rwanda.  1985-1987.
Courses in American and British Novels, American Realism, Survey of American Literature, Modern Tragedy.

Lecturer, University of Freiburg (West Germany).   1983-1985.
Seminars in Modernism, American post-Modernism; Language courses in German-English translation, grammar/composition and literary interpretation.

Teaching Fellow, Vanderbilt University.   1980-1982.
Readings in French Literature (in French) and  German Oral Formulation (in German).  Also lecturer/section leader in a two-semester Western humanities course.
 

Honors, Fellowships, and Offices

Research Excellence Award, United States Naval Academy, 1994.
Civilian Meritorious Service Medal, United States Navy, 1994.
Listing in Best American Essays 1993, “Notable Essays of 1992”: “On Becoming Human”  (Sewanee Review 1992).  National “honorable mention” for an essay.
President, U.S. Dance Critics Association (national professional organization), 1991 92.
1991 Northeast Modern Language Association Mellen Book Award for An Essay in   Post Romantic Literary Theory:Art, Artifact, and the Innocent Eye.
1990 Fellow, U.S. Dance Critics Association; address to the 1990 DCA  Convention, Los  Angeles.
O. Henry Short Story Award, 1990 (inclusion in Prize Stories 1990: The O. Henry Awards,  New York: Doubleday, 1990); “The Autobiography of Gertrude Stein.”
Fellow, Critics’ Conference of the American Dance Festival, Duke University. Summer l988.
Fulbright Professorship in Anglo American Literature, National University of Rwanda, fall  1985 spring 1987.
Fulbright Scholarship, Free University Berlin, 1982 1983.
Scholarship of the Italian Cultural Institute, University of Siena, Summer 1982.
Graduate Select Scholarship, Vanderbilt University, 1980 1982.
Teaching Fellowship, Program in Comparative Literature, Vanderbilt University, 1980 1982.

Honors Scholarship, University of Maryland at College Park Honors Program, 1971 1972.
Scholarship violinist, Rome (Italy) Festival Orchestra, summer 1971.
National Merit Scholarship Finalist, 1971.

Books

Explaining the Culture Wars: Why Liberals and Conservatives Clash. New York:  Routledge, forthcoming.
Liberal and conservative are two coherent world-views. Conservatives define their ethics in terms of actions; liberals in terms of actors. The two inevitably clash, but each should acknowledge the virtues of the other.

Annapolis Autumn: Life, Death, and Literature at the U.S. Naval Academy. New York: The New Press, forthcoming fall 2005.
 

Art and Argument: What Words Can’t Do and What They Can. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003.
Can we ever be convinced by arguments? If so, under what  circumstances? Is a novel arguing with us? Is it communicating with us? Is art true and false? What is the purpose of literary studies? What is the future of literary theory?
 

Sexual Ethics: Liberal vs. Conservative. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004.
Why are people embarrassed to talk about sex? Does sex have a purpose? Is sex part of the personal or the social spheres? Why do liberals and conservatives butt heads so absolutely regarding sexual subjects? Why is abortion such a hot potato? What is the nature of ethical objections to pornography?
 

Science and the Self: The Scale of Knowledge. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004.
What is the relationship between scientific knowledge and other kinds of knowledge? What are these other kinds of knowledge? In what way is science objective? Can we predict the future in the objective world?
 

A Structure Opera.  Geneva, OH: Six Gallery Press, 2002.
Drawing on Gertrude Stein’s attempts to write “operas” in words, answers the question: how does the individual relate to the world?

“Fleming builds a postmodern sandwich that even Dagwood could admire.” Review of Contemporary Fiction

Dance Essays: Sex, Art, and Audience.  New York: Peter Lang, 2000.
 “Fleming excels as reporter, observer, and soothsayer.”  Village Voice

One of its essays, “Gender in Dance,” excerpted and translated into Swedish for the program book of the Gothenburg Opera, Gothenburg Sweden, Fall 2002.
 

Twilley.  A Novel.  New York: Turtle Point Press, 1997.
Experimental novel detailing the world of a small town from the perspective of its  eponymous main character.
“Twilley is equal parts detailed noticing, wild imagining, and good language… Bruce Fleming keeps company with several of the masters of modern literature.”  Baltimore Sun

”Conjectures and asides swell the narrative.  Objects give off eerie vibes. Mr. Fleming trains a microscopic eye on images of decay worthy of the director David Lynch.”  Chronicle of Higher Education

“Fleming navigates with the skill and brio of a master literary mariner.”  Frigatezine

For an excerpt of Twilley, click on:  Twilley

Modernism and its Discontents: Philosophical Problems of Twentieth Century Literary  Theory.  New York: Peter Lang, 1995.
A study of some of the major texts in  twentieth century literary theory.  Attempts to  identify recurring theoretical difficulties in the Modernist enterprise.

Structure and Chaos in Modernist Works.  New York: Peter Lang, 1995.

A study of  works by some of the principal figures of Anglo American Modernism that  emphasizes similarities of Modernist approach across disciplines.  Includes studies of  writers (Eliot, Stein, Woolf), a philosopher (Wittgenstein), a historian (Strachey), a film- maker (Eisenstein) and choreographers (Graham, Balanchine).
 

Caging the Lion: Cross Cultural Fictions.   New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
A study of the interaction  between Western and non Western cultures, ranging from a
consideration of novels by Charlotte Brontë and Hemingway to a Kabuki performance  and the Hollywood film Dances with Wolves.

A Essay in Post Romantic Literary Theory: Art, Artifact, and the Innocent Eye. Lewiston,  N.Y: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991.
Offers a theory of the nature of art  developed  especially with respect to literature.  Published by arrangement with the Northeast Modern Language Association as the Winner of 1991 NEMLA Book Award in Comparative and Interdisciplinary Studies.

“It abounds in astute observations on art and artists and on the acts of seeing and reading and other experiences of mind and senses."  Haverford Magazine
 

Weit im Westen, Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 1985.  Text collage to photographs of the  American West by Erich Spiegelhalter.

Translations German-English: Black Forest Moods; Attractions of the Black Forest;  Nuremberg City Guide.  (Freiburg im Breisgau:  Rombach, respectively 1985, 1984,  1983)
 
 

Articles and Essays

"The Naval Academy Can Do Better," Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, February 2005.
“Why I Love Conservatives,” Antioch Review, Spring 2004.
“Can Reading Clausewitz Save Us From Future Mistakes?” Parameters (Journal of the U.S.  Army War College), Spring 2004.
“Not Affirmative, Sir: A Well-Meaning Admissions Board’s Absurd Reality,” Washington Post  Feb 16, 2003.
“Vanity, Thy Name is Man,” Village Voice 18 September 2002.
“Loyal Opposition isn’t Disloyal,” Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, September 2001.
“Soseki and His Discontents”  Michigan Quarterly Review,   Summer 2001.
“What is the Value of Literary Studies?”  New Literary History, Summer 2000.
“Skirting the Precipice: Art and Audience,” Antioch Review, Summer l998.
“Why Are We Entranced by Trashy Thrillers?” (on action movies), Chronicle of Higher  Education, August 6, l998. Also in: Writing From Sources. Ed. Brenda Spatt. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 153-157.
Also in an anthology of contemporary essays, St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
“On Technique in Modern Art: The Church Exhibition,” Centennial Review, Winter 1996.
“The Waste Land and Film Theory,” SB Academic Review (Kerala, India), Winter 1994.
“Passivity and the Unhappy (Wo)man: Dreiser’s Sister Carrie,”  Indian Review of   American Studies (American Studies Research Centre Hyderabad), Summer 1991  (actually l994).
“What Makes a Bad Book Bad?” Southwest Review, Winter 1992.
“Mr. Overton’s Solution: On Systems in Thought,” New Orleans Review, Winter 1993.
“Brothers Under the Skin: Achebe on Heart of Darkness,” College Literature, Summer 1992.
“Thoughts and their Discontents: Törless, Book to Film,” Literature/Film Quarterly, Summer  1992.
“The Sweet Smell of Success: A Re assessment of Patrick Suskind’s Perfume,” South
 Atlantic Review, November 1991.

“Pictures of Pictures: Two Film Script Versions of Eisenstein’s Potemkin,” Intertextuality:  Selected Papers from the thirteenth Annual Conference in Literature and Film.   Tallahassee, FL: Florida State U Press, 1993.
“Floudering About in Silence: What the Governess Couldn’t Say” (on The Turn of the Screw),  Studies in Short Fiction, Spring 1989.
“Pound and Eisenstein on the Ideogram: Sketch for a Theory of Modernism,” Southwest Review Winter 1989.  Also in  Literature and Popular Culture: A Festschrift for Prof. Sequeira, Hyderabad (India): Cauvery Publications, 1991.
“Proust and Peirce, Time and Memory,” Philosophy and Literature, April 1989.
“An Essay in Seduction, or The Trouble With Bovary,” French Review, April 1989.  Also in:  Major Literary Characters: Emma Bovary, ed. Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea  House, 1993.
“The Coffee Grounds of the Labassecourien Housemaids, or Inside and Outside in Literature”   (on Charlotte Brontë’s Villette), Essays in Literature, Spring 1988.
“Writing in Pidgin: Language in  For Whom The Bell Tolls,”  Dutch Quarterly Review of  Anglo American Letters l5,  l985.
“The Tragic Moth,” Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo American Letters (on Virginia
 Woolf's essay “The Death of the Moth”), 15 2, 1985.

Short Stories, Poetry, and Personal Essays

“A Student’s Guide to the Classics” (story-essay) Antioch Review, Summer 2003.
“On Asking the Question, ‘What is the Sense of Life?”  Marlboro Review, Winter 2001.
“Be a Male Model!  Or Just Look Like One,” Southwest Review, summer 2001.
“A Year at the U.S. Naval Academy,”  Sewanee Review, forthcoming.
“Snowstorms” (poem),  Puckerbrush Review, fall 2001.
“Two Cities: Fragments of a Year” (story), Puckerbrush Review, Winter 2000.
“Gay Poets, Women, and Other Threats to Group Loyalty at the Naval Academy,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, l998.
“In the Once Silent Submarine Service” (personal essay), Southwest Review, Winter 1996.
“Intimations of India” (personal essay), Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 1995.
“At the Army Navy Poetry Play offs” (personal essay),  Lingua Franca, May June 1992.   Reprinted from: Antioch Review, Fall 1991 (cover story).
“On the Unity of the ‘I’” (short story), Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1992.
“On Becoming Human” (personal essay), Sewanee Review,  Summer 1992.
“Another Way of Dying: African Perceptions of AIDS” (essay), The Nation, April 2, l990.
“The Autobiography of Gertrude Stein” (short story), Gettysburg Review, Spring 1989.  Also
 in Prize Stories 1990: The O. Henry Awards, New York: Doubleday, 1990.
 “Tour de force.” –Washington Post

Essays and Reviews on Dance

More than a decade of reviews and essays for Ballet Review, Dance View, New Dance Review,
 Dance International, and Dance Magazine, were collected in 2000 in Sex, Art, and
 Audience: Dance Essays.
In addition:
“Looking Out,” in Cross Cultural Perspectives, New York: Shirmer/Macmillan, 1995.
“Balanchine as Modernist: ‘Serenade’,” in Studies in Dance History; Looking at Ballet:  Balanchine and Ashton 1926-1936, Society of Dance History Scholars, Fall 1993.
“Go West, Young Dancer,” Commonweal 6 Dec 199l.
“Dance: The Case of the Missing Text,” Yearbook for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Fine  Arts.  Lewiston,  NY:  The Edwin Mellen Press, l992.

Entries in International Encyclopedia of Ballet and Classical Dance (Detroit: St. James Press,  1993) on Balanchine’s “Agon,” “Serenade,” ADavidsbündlertänze,” “Four   Temperaments” and “Prodigal Son”; Ashton’s “A Birthday Offering”;  Robbins’     “Concert.”

Book Reviews and Review Essays

“Bodies Beautiful” (review of Dance Ink: Photographs), Dance View 15.2 (1998).
“Ezra Pound’s Early Poetry and Poetics,” Poet Lore,  l998.
“Sally Banes’s Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism,” Dance View, Winter 1994-
 95.
“Woolf Cubs: Current Fiction,” Antioch Review, Fall 1994.
“Lincoln Kirstein’s Mosaic,” Dance View, Autumn 1994.
“Shell Shocked in Tennessee” (review of Richard Marius’  After the War) Washington Post  Book World, 7 June 1992.
“Dancing the Muse” (review of Dance in Poetry), Poet Lore, Summer 1992.
“Duino Elegies” (review essay of a new translation), Poet Lore, Fall 1993.
“Do We Need to Know How We Know Who?” (review essay) Semiotica 66:4 (l987).
“History of Theory, Theory of History” (review essay on Frank Lentricchia’s After the New  Criticism), Kodikas/Code, 8 1,2  (1984).
“Rational Discourse and Poetic Communication,” (review essay of Roland Posner's book of  essays on semiotics),  Kodikas/Code, 7 1,2 (1984).
“Flaubert and Post modernism” (book review of a collection of essays), Romanic Review,  76 l, (1985).
Essay reviews in Magill’s Literary Annual (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press):
1988: On Reading Ruskin by Marcel Proust.
1989: Wittgenstein, A Life: Young Ludwig, l889 l921 by Brian McGuinness.
1990: Europe, Europe: Forays into a Continent by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.
 Imperative of Modernity: An Intellectual Biography of Jose Ortega y               Gasset by Rockwell Gray.
1991: German Romanticism and its Institutions by Theodore Ziolkowski.
1992:  India by Stanley Wolpert.
          Martha by Agnes de Mille.
                      In My Father's House by Anthony Appiah.
 1993: Islam and the West, by Bernard Lewis.

Papers and Lectures

“The Metaphysics of Action Movies,” University of Alabama at Huntsville, November l998.
“Writing Twilley,” Haverford College, November 1997.
“Literature and Dance,” “Literature and Art,” “Literature and Music,” Lecture series at the Appalachian Summer Festival, Appalachian State University, July 1996.

“Owen at Annapolis,” International Conference on  Narrative, Vancouver Canada, March 1994.
“Ballet Versions of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ " Dance Critics Association Conference, San Francisco,  April 1994.
“Was ist Kunst? Ein Literaturtheoretiker Antwortet,” University of Konstanz, March 1992.
“’The Waste Land’ and Film Theory,” International Conference on Narrative,  Vanderbilt  University, April 1992.
“Proust and the Power of Solitude,” “Persons, Passions, Powers,” U. of California, Berkeley,  May 1992.
“Balanchine as Modernist: ‘Serenade’,” “Looking at Ballet: Ashton and Balanchine  1926 1936,”  Russell Sage College, Troy NY, July 1991.
“Film Theory’s Central Myth,” Literature/Film Association Conference, Salisbury State   University, June 1991.
“Brothers Under the Skin: Achebe on Heart of Darkness,” Northeast Modern Language   Association,   Hartford CT, April l99l.
“Vers l'indépendance littéraire américaine," Biennale des Arts  et des Letttres, Dakar, Senegal,  December 1990.
“Törless: Book to Film,”  Literature/Film Association Conference, Salisbury State University,  June 1990.
“Looking at the Other: Non Western Dance in the 90s,” Dance Critics Association, California  State U, Los Angeles, August 1990.
“Proust and Peirce on Time and Memory,” South Alantic Modern Language Association,  Washington, D.C., November 1988.
“Pictures of Pictures: Film Script Versions of Eisenstein’s Potemkin.”  Thirteenth Annual  Florida State University Conference  on Film and Literature,  January 1988.
Lecture tour August 1992 under the auspices of the United States Information Agency:   University of Hyderabad (India); American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad;   University of Madras, University of Kerala (Trivandrum).  Lectures on aesthetics and  American literature.
Lecture tour December 1990 under the auspices of the United  States Information Agency:  Conakry, Guinea and Dakar, Senegal. Lectures on dance criticism in Conakry, including a presentation in French on Guinean radio. In Dakar,  lectures (in French) at the Biennale  des Arts et des  Lettres, the University of Dakar, the National Teacher Training College,  and the West African Officer Training School.
Lecture tour May 1987 under the auspices of the United States Information Agency: University of Nairobi (Kenya), University of Algiers, École Normale Supérieure de Bamako (Mali), University of Dakar (Senegal).  Lectures (in French and English): AThe Theoretical Roots of Modernism,” “Sister Carrie and Her Cousins: The City in African and American Fiction,” “Huck Finn in the 80s: The Uses of The Past,” “Two (Black) American Classics: Invisible Man and Native Son.”

Lectures May 1986 under the auspices of the United States Information Agency: Mahatma  Gandhi Institute, Mauritius,  University of Nairobi (Kenya): “The Process Towards  American Literary Independence,” and (in Mauritius) on other topics in American dance,  art and literature.
Member, International Press Corps, II Bournonville Festival, April 1992, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Administrative Responsibilites, USNA

Member, Admissions Board, 2001-2002.
Member, Departmental Pay and Promotion Committee, 2000-
Member, Yard-Wide Trident Scholar Committee, 1996-1999.
Director, Honors Program, English Dept., 1996-2000 .
27th Co. Faculty Representative, 1996-97.
27th Co. Plebe Advisor, 1996-97.
Member, English Dept. Pay and Promotion Committee, 1995-97.
Member, English Dept. Plebe Curriculum Committee, 1995-97.
Judge, Jasperson Playwriting Contest, 1995.
Judge, Pitt Poetry Prize, l993.
Co director, USNA St. John’s College Seminar, 1988  92.
Co director, USNA Humanities Colloquium, l990  93.
Faculty representative, USNA Varsity Off shore sailing team,
1988 90.
Faculty advisor, USNA Chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, National English Honor Society,
1989 2000.
Combined Federal Campaign unit manager, 1989 90.
Member, English Department CCC/Honors Committee 1988 90.
Member, Pay Committee 1989 91.
Member, Rhodes Marshall Scholarship Committee, 1990 94.
Director, Trident Scholar inependent study project 1989 90: “The American in Europe: James,  Stein, and Hemingway.”
Department co-ordinator, Combined Federal Campaign, 1988.
Compiled departmental Command History, 1988.

Other Work

Director and lecturer, International Film Series, Appalachian Summer Festival, Appalachian  Summer Festival, l994-96.
Baltimore correspondent, Dance Magazine, 1990 95.
Adjunct faculty member, School of Continuing Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, summer  1991 (course in Modernism).
Surveillant, Lyçée Français International de Washington, D.C.  1976 77.
Substitute teacher, Prince George’s County MD  public schools, 1974 76.
Census taker, motel night clerk, 1979 1980.