Fluent in Whitman as well as Warhol, Michael Devine brings a deeply literate, playful
sensibility to the poetics of pop forms, from early cinema to new media. An interdisciplinary
scholar, artist, and teacher, he received his Ph.D. in English literature from UCLA,
where he studied with Michael North and Mark McGurl. Winner of the 2018 SUNY Chancellor’s
Award for Excellence in Teaching, he has been a Dickson Fellow (Art History-UCLA),
a National Endowment for the Humanities recipient, and a finalist for the University
of Pennsylvania’s national Zuckerman Prize for the best dissertation in American Studies.
Devine has placed critical and creative work in leading publications such as American Literature, Adaptation, Measure, and the Journal of Experiential Education, and his own films on the poetics of place have been screened regionally and nationally.
His recent experimental essays in the Los Angeles Review of Books explore contemporary writers Michael Robbins and Hanif Abdurraqib, pop anthems (Khalid’s
“Let’s Go”) and poetry (T.S. Eliot: “Let us go then…”), challenging what we think
we know about high and low. Archival and timely, essays like “Early Cinema and the
Post-9/11 City” (chosen for the Routledge Introduction to American Postmodernism selected bibliography) embody the approach of his first book project, a cinematic
literary history from the late nineteenth century to today.
A pop practitioner, Devine is a noted performance artist, lyricist, composer, and
co-founder of the music collective Famous Letter Writer (FLW). Praised by New York City arts journal Two Coats of Paint for “a compelling and extraordinary sound,” FLW has been invited to festivals headlined
by popular musicians such as tUnE-yArDs and Noname, and was invited to join a roster
of avant-garde musicians at the New York Electronic Music Summit. Recorded at Brooklyn’s
historic Pencil Factory, FLW’s upcoming debut is about expression and erasure in American
culture. Produced by NYC underground legend Keith Zarriello (The Shivers/Sonny Santos),
WARHOLA is part of a larger intermedial project scheduled for release in 2020-2021.
“Are We Experienced? Reflections on the SUNY Experiential Learning Mandate,” Journal of Experiential Education 41.1 (2018): 23–38. Isaak, J. et al.
“The Whole Thing (and Other Things): From Panorama to Attraction in Stephen Crane’s
‘The Open Boat,’ Ashcan Art, and Early Cinema,” Sensationalism and the Genealogy of Modernity, ed. Alberto Gabriele (New York: Palgrave, 2017): 217–238.
“Early Cinema and the Post-9/11 City: Hugo and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” The City Since 9/11: Literature, Film, Culture, ed. Keith Wilhite (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016): 245-260.
Burgh: Interview on a Cinepoem, Saranac Review, November, 2015.
Anywhere to Go (2019). Co-directed with Jean Ulysse. Premiered at Seven Days.
Harvest (2016). Co-directed with Jean Ulysse.
The Michigan (2016). Co-directed with Jean Ulysse. Screenings include the Lake Placid Film Festival.
Burgh (2015). Co-directed with Julia Devine. Screenings include the Rural Creative Placemaking
Summit at the University of Iowa, National Art Strategies Conference in Seattle, WA.,
The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, NY.
Speaker at a variety of conferences and venues, including Modernist Studies Association,
Film & History Conference, Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900,
Victorian Interdisciplinary Society, Association of American Colleges and Universities:
General Education and Assessment, Upper Jay Arts Center, and the Lake Placid Center
for the Performing Arts
“Poe’s Underground Cinema”
“From Manhatta to Burgh: Film, Poetry, Place”
“Reading in the Flipped Classroom: In-Class Strategies for Boosting Reading, Writing,
and Discussion”
“Electric Anthology: Screening American Literature in 1895”
“Salome/Topsy/Pearl: Dance in the Age of Early Cinema”
“Epics of the Air: World War I in Film and Poetry”
