Robert Lapp
Biography
During his 25 years in the Department (1997-2023), Dr. Lapp taught 18th and 19th-century British Literature with a specialization in the Romantic period. He also taught poetics, literary history, and, most recently, the ecological literature of the Anthropocene. He served as Head of the Department from 2011-2017 and from 2020-2023, leading two Unit Reviews in 2013 and 2022.
As a 3M National Teaching Fellow (2008) he was also active in Educational Leadership, including serving as President of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) from 2014-2017, and, most recently, as Co-Chair of the Maple League Teaching and Learning Committee (2019-2021).
He continues to be a strong advocate for the public performance of poetry and enjoys giving performances of literary works at community events and on local media. From 2017 to 2022, in collaboration with Bruce Wark of Sackville, he read one poem a week (for a total of 166 poems) as the 鈥淧oetry Lover鈥 on CBC NB Radio One鈥檚 late afternoon show Shift, hosted by Vanessa Vandervalk.
Publications
Selected Publications
Contest for Cultural Authority: Hazlitt, Coleridge, and the Distresses of the Regency. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. [PR 4484 L37 1999]
"Authorship in Eighteen Hundred and Eleven : An Integral Approach." English Studies in Canada 38.2 (June 2012): 49-70.
"Gateways in Higher Education: the STLHE Comes to Halifax," Focus on University Teaching and Learning 25.1 (June 2017).
"Romanticism Repackaged: New Faces of 'Old Man' Coleridge" in Fraser's Magazine , 1830-32" European Romantic Review 11:2 (Spring 2000).
"My First Acquaintance with Critics." The New Quarterly 117 (Spring 2011).
Review of Anna Laetitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment by William McCarthy. Religion in the Age of Enlightenment 2 (2010).
鈥淭he Englishman鈥檚 Magazine.鈥 Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism. Ed Laurel Brake and Marysa Denmoor. London: Academia Press and the British Library, 2009.
鈥溾楲ines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey鈥 (William Wordsworth)." Companion to Literary Romanticism. NY: Facts on File, 2009.
鈥溾極de to a Nightingale鈥 (John Keats).鈥 Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. NY: Facts on File, 2010.
鈥溾楢 Summer Evening鈥檚 Meditation鈥 (Anna Laetitia Barbauld).鈥 Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. New York: Facts on File, 2010.
鈥淭he Swing Riots.鈥 Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. New York: Facts on File, 2010.
Education
B.A. (University of Toronto, 1978)
M.A. (University of Toronto, 1985)
Ph.D. (Dalhousie University, 1997)
Teaching
Courses Taught
Literature, the Arts and Humanities
Introduction to the Principles of Literary Analysis
Introduction to Poetry
Literary Periods to 1800
Literary Periods, 1800-Present
Restoration and Augustan Literature
Literature of the Enlightenment
Literature in the Age of Romanticism
Regency Literature
Early Victorian Literature
Late Victorian Literature
Literature and the Natural World
4000-level seminar courses taught:
Ecofiction of Forest Ecology (winter 2023)
Ecopoetics (Winter 2020)
Transatlantic Romanticism (Winter 2016)
Romantic Ecology (Winter 2012)
The Night in Literature (Fall 2007)
Literary Representations of the 1830s (Fall 2005)
Prose of the 1820s (Winter 2003)
Literature of the 1830s (Winter 2001)
Honours Theses, Independent Studies, and Summer Research Supervisions
Tess Casher, 鈥淟eviathans and Language: How Rhetorical Strategies in Herman Melville鈥檚 Moby-Dick Can Influence Readers鈥 Perceptions of Sociopolitical Ideas (Honours Thesis, 2022-23)
Tess Casher, 鈥淒ickens鈥檚 Ghosts鈥 (Independent Study Supervision, 2023)
Lili Simpson, 鈥淔ootsteps: The Visual and Literary Vocabulary of the Tantramar鈥 (Summer Research Grant Supervision, 2022)
(Co-supervision) Kennedy Longaphie, 鈥淪eeing Harm: Visual Violence in Early Modern English Tragedy鈥 (Honours thesis, 2019-2020)
Cecilia Stuart, "She Has Seeds under Her Tongue: Biosemiotic Ecofeminism in Canadian Women's Poetry" (Honours Thesis, 2017-18)
Ren茅e Belliveau, "Disruptive Heroines: Transatlantic Proto-feminism in the 1860s Sensation Fiction of Mary E. Braddon & Louisa M. Alcott" (Honours Thesis, 2016-17)
Victoria Valli猫re, "Faith in Literature: A Post-secular Approach" (Honours Thesis, 2016-17)
Miriam Farhloul, "Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Ethical Imagination" (Summer Research Supervision, 2014)
Amber Tucker, The Tradition of Radical Poetics in Blake, Shelley, Whitman, and Ginsberg" (Honours Thesis, 2013-14)
Sean McDonell, "The Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells" (Summer Research Superivision, 2013)
Brigitte Desroches, "Traversing the In-between: Encountering Liminal Spaces in Medieval and Romantic Literatures" (Summer Research Supervision, 2013)
Sean McDonell, "A Handbook for Writers: Elements of Literary Composition" (Summer Research Supervision, 2012)
Caroline Wong, "How the Tories Stole Carnival: Folk Culture in Post-Interregnum Satire" (Summer Research Supervision, 2012)
Bernard Soubry, "Grappling with Gyres: Yeat's Poetry and the Tension of Eras", Co-supervised with Dr. Peter Brown (Independent Studies Supervision, 2012)
Ashley Steeves and Thomas Woodbury, Children's Literature, 1800-Present (Independent Studies Supervision, 2010)
Grants, awards & honours
3M National Teaching Fellowship, 2008
J. E. A. Crake Teaching Award in the Arts (绿帽论坛), 2005
Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU) Distinguished Teacher Award, 2003
Herbert and Leota Tucker Teaching Award (绿帽论坛), 2003