Stephen Whitworth

Teaching and Research Interests

Dr. Whitworth's interests include early modern non-dramatic literature, psychoanalysis and semiotics. His publications are found in such noted places as Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, The Shakespeare Yearbook, and The Journal of Lacanian Studies. He also contributed articles to the Ashgate volume Critical Essays on Shakespeare's "A Lover's Complaint": Suffering Ecstasy.

Dr. Whitworth is publishing an article entitled "Singing the Failure of Meaning: Crashaw's Baroque Poetry" in a volume entitled Madness Yes You Can't: Lacan's Take on Insanity forthcoming from Routledge in Spring 2014.

Dr. Whitwoth also delivered a lecture entitled "Minding the Gap: Southwell's Elizabethan Song of the Baroque Rift" at Tel Aviv University's upcoming symposium "The Perversity of the Poetic," in January 2014.

Courses Taught

• ENGL228 - Core Western Texts
• ENGL240 - British Literature I
• ENGL340 - British Literature and Culture
• ENGL390 - Shakespeare
• WRIT103 - Foundations in Composition

Research and Scholarship

Stephen Whitworth, Ph.D., was invited for a second year to deliver the keynote lecture at the Department of English at Tel Aviv University's annual symposium in January on literature and psychoanalysis. This year's symposium was entitled "The Perversity of the Poetic."

Whitworth delivered a lecture entitled "'The Most is Not Too Much': Masochism and the Perverse Phantasm in Southwell's 'Complaynt of St. Peter (1591).'" After delivering his lecture, Whitworth answered questions and participated in a roundtable discussion of the work being done on literature and psychoanalysis in a variety of literary periods by Israeli English faculty, graduate students, and analysts.

Scholarship 2013

April — Whitworth, Ph.D., was invited to be a featured speaker and panel respondent at the annual Affiliated Psychoanalytic Workshops' international seminar at Fordham University in New York City. This year's seminar topic is "Laughter and Psychoanalysis," and Whitworth will be speaking on "Laughter of Delirium: Feminine Jouissance and the Theme of the Three Caskets in The Merchant of Venice."

March — Whitworth, Ph.D., was invited to deliver the hour-long keynote lecture at the "Reading Medieval and Renaissance English Literature" international seminar at Tel Aviv University in Israel. His lecture, "Metalepsis and Allusion: Death of Metaphor, Reparative Play in Thomas Traherne's 'Infant Eye.'"

Scholarship 2012

September — Whitworth, Ph.D., recently published "De L'Homme Ambigu a L'Homme des Ambi-goux" in the online journal of Washington D.C. Forum of the Ecole de Psychanalyse des Forums du Champ Lacanien. This will be followed by "Spell It Wrong to Read it Right: Crashaw, Psychosis, and the Baroque Poetics of the Letter," which is forthcoming from Routledge in Madness and Creativity, ed. Manya Steinkoler.

April — Whitworth, Ph.D., attended the Affiliated Psychoanalytic Workshops' conference, The Art of Madness, also in NYC, to present his paper, "I Sing the Name Which None Can Say: Crashaw, Psychosis, and the Baroque Science of the Letter."

April — Whitworth, Ph.D., presented a paper, "Resuscitating the Dead Letter: Psychoanalysis, Pedagogy, and Transference Love," on April 21 at the Manhattan Borough Community College-CUNY's conference, Transitions and Transactions, in New York City.

Scholarship 2011

April — Whitworth, Ph.D., presented a piece, "Returning Being to the Abyss: Psychoanalysis, Le Gay Scavoir, and Terminal Illness" at the bi-annual international English-Speaking Seminar of the Ecole de Psychanalyse des Forums du Champ Lacanien in Washington D.C. in April. The essay will be published later this year in “The Proper Place of Affects in Psychoanalysis: Freud to Lacan,” ed. Patricia Dahan, by the EPFCL Press.

March — Whitworth, Ph.D., published his "Sidney, Lacan, and the Perverse Phantasy of Pastoral" in a special, book-length issue of The Shakespeare Yearbook, entitled Lacanian Interpretation of Shakespeare, edited by Douglass Brooks of Texas A&M University.

Scholarship 2009

October — Whitworth, Ph.D., organized a student conference on literature and psychoanalysis, "Psychosexual Haunting in Henry James and William Shakespeare."

The conference took place at the Alumni House on Oct. 10 and examined the relationship between sexuality and identity. The conference was sponsored by the Bloomsburg Dead Letter Society, the local chapter of the international Ecole de Psychanalyse des Forums du Champ Lacanien. Whitworth was officially invited to become a member of the EPFCL this fall.

October — Whitworth, Ph.D., spoke as an invited lecturer at the bi-annual English-Speaking Symposium of the Ecole de Psychanalyse des Forums du Champ Lacanien in Paris. His paper, "Ravage: Between Masculine Sexuality and Analytic Desire," will be featured as the first essay in a 2010 book published by the Ecole, "Sexual Identity and the Unconscious."

Whitworth was afterward invited by the Ecole to speak at its 2010 Congress in Rome, on the subject of "the mysteries of the speaking body." His paper, "Transference and the Telepathy of the Wound-Mouth in the Mother-Son Relation: Crashaw's 'Sancta Maria Dolorum." The Bloomsburg psychoanalytic study group Whitworth advises, the Dead Letter Society, has been registered as an outreach affiliate activity of both the Forum and the Ecole.

Scholarship 2008

February — Whitworth, Ph.D., was invited to deliver a paper entitled "A Dream, A Romance: Motherhood and Projective Identification" at the Washington D.C. Center for Psychoanalysis on Feb. 17.

April — Whitworth, Ph.D., was invited to be a respondent on a panel entitled "Transference Love and the Agalma," by the Lacanian organization, Affiliated Psychoanalytic Workshops, in Philadelphia.

September — Whitworth, Ph.D., associate professor of English, just received his postdoctoral certification in psychoanalytic theory and writing from the Washington D.C. Center for Psychoanalysis. He also had an article entitled "When Both the Medical and the Analytic Cut Fail" accepted by the Israeli psychoanalytic journal, Et Lacan.