David Aitchison
Visiting Associate Professor of English
Contact +1 630 637 5220
dcaitchison@noctrl.edu
Office Location
KH
Office Hours
A graduate of Stirling, Glasgow, & Boston universities, I received my Ph.D. in Literary Studies in December 2012 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; since 2013, I have taught in the Department of English at NCC. As an Americanist and a generalist teacher and scholar, I am concerned with the ways in which fiction and curricula guide, educate, and represent children and young adults. My research can be found in journals including Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, The Lion and the Unicorn, Children’s Literature in Education, Journal of Narrative Theory, The Journal of American Culture, Pedagogy, and the Journal of General Education. Recent conference activity has included presenting on teenage writers and marketplace consciousness at January 19's MLA conference in Chicago, Illinois; and presenting on Rachel Carson's philosophy of environmental education for children at June 18's ChLA conference in San Antonio, Texas. I am currently working on a book-length study of popular representations of school experience in print and film, The School Story in the Age of Neoliberalism, under contract with University Press of Mississippi.
Selected Scholarship
"The Young Archive and First-Year Writing: Using School Stories to Encourage Students' Scholarly Identity," essay in Pedagogy, vol. 18, no. 3, 2018.
“Giving Education a Bad Name: Bookish Boys in Contemporary American School Stories,” essay in Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 41, no. 1, 2018.
“The Hunger Games, Spartacus, and Other Family Stories: Sentimental Revolution in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction,” essay in The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 39, no. 3, 2015.
“Lost Causes, Affective Affinities: Radical Chronotope in the Age of Liberal Narrative,” essay in JNT Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 45., no. 3, 2015.
“Little Saboteurs: The Child, The Childlike, and the Principled Life in Carl Hiaasen’s Ecotage Novels for Young Adults,” essay in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 40. no. 2, 2015.
Courses Taught
CARD 101 First Year Seminar - Writing
FYE 100 First Year Experience Seminar
ENG 115 First-year Writing: Readers, Writers, School Stories
ENG 125 First-year Seminar: Children, Childhood, and Global Cinema
IDS 125 First-year Interdisciplinary Studies Seminar: Reading Children’s Literature
ENGL 106 How to Read & Write Poems
ENGL 124 Young Adult Fiction
ENG 196 Reading Literature: American Childhoods
ENGL 202 British Literature to the 17th Century
ENG 203 English Literature to 1660: "The World Under Heaven"
ENG 205 18th Century British and American Literature
ENG 207 19th & 20th Century American Literature
ENGL 208 American Literature & Culture
ENGL 302 Shakespeare
ENG 305 Studies in Contemporary Literature: The Young Adult Novel
ENG 315 Advanced Writing: “Only Connect…”—Rhetoric, Composition, Research
ENGL 332 Multicultural American Literature
ENG 401 Contemporary American Drama/ Leadership, Ethics, & Values