LeeAnn Derdeyn, Ph.D.
Contact Me at: lderdeyn@smu.edu

Dr. LeeAnn Derdeyn’s interdisciplinary research in Ethics and 20th/ 21st C Transatlantic English Literature (American, British, and Irish) examines the larger political, environmental, and social justice issues.  Intersecting these concerns, she has published or has forthcoming, works within an array of 20th / 21st C writers: Environmentalism in Ezra Pound’s Cantos, Alienation and Affirmation in T. S. Eliot, Relational Failure Public and Private in Ali Smith’s Autumn, Politics and Love in David Foster Wallace, Trauma and the Anthropocene in Helen Macdonald, Travel as Trouble in Leontia Flynn, Environment as Identity in Seamus Heaney, Affirmative Action and Representational Language in Zadie Smith, Love and Insecurity in Tracy K. Smith and Aracelis Girmay, among others. Dr. Derdeyn’s works often address ways modern writers mine or landmine the culturally inherited world views of ancient and medieval literature and philosophy. She has presented at the Modern Language Association, the T. S. Eliot Society, the American Literature Association, the Seamus Heaney Memorial Conference (Queen’s U, Belfast, Ireland), The Center for Irish Studies (Queen’s U, Belfast, Ireland), Cosmopoetics (U Durham, England), the Congress on Medieval Studies, and the Jane Austen Society of North America Annual Conference. She currently teaches at Southern Methodist University (SMU). LeeAnn has a B.A. in medieval literature and spirituality, an M.A and Ph.D. in Modern and Contemporary Literature, and a certification in Holocaust Studies and Modern German/Jewish literature from the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas.