Dr. Michael Devine

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Michael (M.I.) Devine is an interdisciplinary writer, teacher, artist and pop practitioner. Most days you’ll catch him spinning signs at the intersection of the public humanities and pop culture, where the nickelodeon meets the art museum (just down the street from the library). 

Author of an award-winning, genre-defying book that mixtapes literary and cultural history with memoir and poetry, Warhol’s Mother’s Pantry: Art, America, and the Mom in Pop (“pops off the page” – Los Angeles Review of Books), Devine received his Ph.D. in English literature from UCLA. He’s been a Dickson Fellow in Art History, a National Endowment for the Humanities recipient, and his work on literature, early cinema, and the arts was a finalist for the University of Pennsylvania’s national Zuckerman Prize for the best research on American Studies and visual culture. 

Devine has won critical attention for the deeply literate, playful sensibility he brings to the poetics of pop forms. You’ll find him reviewed, interviewed or published in Commonweal, Talkhouse, American Songwriter, Chicago Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, Tupelo Quarterly, Seven Days, The Millions, About Larkin, Measure, American Literature, Adaptation, Literary Matters and in many collections on subjects ranging from early cinema and literary modernism to experiential education. A believer in the power of the humanities to serve the public good, he’s designed many large-scale events, exhibits, and gatherings, including The Lake Champlain International Film Festival, Pop for the People (Plattsburgh State Art Museum), and the ongoing viewpoints: Human (flow) project. 

Devine is co-founder, with Julia Devine, of Famous Letter Writer, an interdisciplinary pop arts collective. FLW makes artisanal pop music, experimental cinema and produces creative experiences and events. A debut record, Warhola, premiered through American Songwriter, was featured nationally on NPR’s Songs of the Week, and was named one of the best records of 2020 by Burlington’s Seven Days. Short films have screened internationally, and the Devines were awarded the North Country Filmmaker Award by the Snowtown Film Festival. They recently won a 2023 New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists grant with the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts for DADAMAMA, a music and film project.

In 2018 Devine won the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2021 he was appointed director of the Center for Interdisciplinary and Area Studies.

• Education
  • Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles (2011)
  • M.A., Villanova University
• Teaching Areas
  • ENG 101, College Writing II
  • HON 152, Outsiders in American Film
  • ENG 163, Introduction to Film and Literature
  • ENG 195, Fundamentals of Literary Study
  • ENG 301, Expository Writing
  • ENG 305, Teaching Writing to Adolescents
  • ENG 343, American Literature (Civil War to WWI)
  • ENG 346, American Literature (1900–1960)
  • ENG 375, Literature for Classroom Teachers
  • ENG 422, International Film
  • ENG 448, Irish Literature
• Selected Publications
  • Los Angeles Review of Books essays: “Wait for it: On Michael Robbins and Refrains” (2017), “After Winter: Leonard Cohen, Rostam, Noname” (2018), “Warhol’s Mother’s Pantry: Or, Pop in the Age of Bird Box” (2019)
  • “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.
  • “The Literature of Attractions: Teaching the Popular Fiction of the 1890s through Early Cinema,” Teaching Tainted Lit: Popular American Fiction in Today’s classroom, ed. Janet Casey (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015): 163–178.
  • “What To Do About the Teenage Philip Larkin?” Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry 10.1 (Fall 2015): 52–67.
  • Review of Planets on Tables: Poetry, Still Life, and the Turning World by Bonnie Costello. William Carlos Williams Review 29.2 (Fall 2013): 200–202.
  • “‘An Art That Won’t Behave’: Film and the Seven Arts, 1907–1921,” American Literature 84.1 (2012): 89–117.
  • “‘Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory’: The Cinematic Adaptation of American Poetry,”Adaptation 5.1 (2012): 1–17.
• Films
  • 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.
• Selected Presentations
  • 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”
• Awards & Professional Service
  • SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2018
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Award, Summer 2016
  • Fellow, Institute for Ethics in Public Life, SUNY Plattsburgh, 2015
  • Programmer and Coordinator: Lake Champlain International Film Festival, 2015–2017
  • NEH Panelist
  • Reader for Cinema Journal and Journal of Experiential Education