Master Lecturer
Contact
Office: CGS 221D; Office hours W 10:00–1:00
617-358-0303
ccoffman@bu.edu
Courses
Coffman currently teaches three sections of WR 120 (K1, L3, OA) on the topic “Rhetorics of Remix.” The course engages materials from classical to contemporary in examining remix as a governing mode of our cultural moment, one that informs everything from televised cartoons and avant-garde art to presidential campaign materials and dance club music. The ubiquity of adaptations, samples, cut ups, and other recontextualizations across genres, media, and rhetorical situations demands attention, and looking at the techniques, tools, intentions, dangers, and power of remixes can help writers think more carefully and more productively about their own work.
Bio
Coffman is the author of Rewriting Early America: The Prenational Past in Postmodern Literature (Lehigh University Press) and editor of After Postmodernism: The New American Fiction (Routledge), William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion (University of Delaware Press), and Framing Films: Critical Perspectives on Film History (Kendall / Hunt). His scholarly work includes articles on the rhetoric of space, popular music, opera, and a variety of topics in French, English, Irish, and American literatures. He serves on the editorial board of several journals, and, in addition to his work as a scholar, has published fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction in a variety of venues.