Raymond Malewitz Website
I am an associate professor in the
School of Writing, Literature, and Film at
Oregon State University. My work is centered in contemporary American literature, literature and science, environmental literature, and material culture.
My first book
The Practice of Misuse (available for purchase at
Stanford UP and
Amazon) examines creative acts of repurposing in American culture from the 1960s to the present. Setting works by Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Sam Shepard, Thomas Pynchon, Shelley Jackson, Chuck Palahniuk, and Don DeLillo alongside contemporary “maker communities” such as
Instructables and
IKEA Hacker, the book shows how rugged consumers challenge the assumption of single, pre-determined functions for objects. If you are interested in this subject, check out my recent
blogpost.
My monograph-in-progress is a cultural history of animal diseases and
their management. Recently, a short section of that project was
published by
Critical Inquiry. Related articles are available in the Washington Post
here and
here.
In summer 2019, I began work on the "Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms" YouTube series, which is designed to assist high school and college English students to meaningfully engage with texts and succeed
in their literary studies. The current videos in the series are available to your left.
