Beth Buhot Runquist, Ph.D.

Dr. Beth Buhot Runquist serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor for the 2012-2013 year. She earned her Ph.D. from Duquesne University in the fall of 2011. She specializes in contemporary American literature and the literature and culture of the American suburbs. She also teaches multiple sections in the first-year writing program.

Dr. Runquist's primary research interest is recent literature and film that depicts the experiences of women in the 20th- and 21st -century American suburbs. She is particularly interested in learning why many recent novels and films affirm the suburbs' reputations as controlled and controlling environments that limit women to thankless domestic tasks and to physical and social isolation while other recent texts revise or reject this notion.

In addition to reading and writing, she enjoys swimming, music, and spending time with her husband, Matt, and her twelve-year-old mutt, Gus. A true Pittsburgher, she is also an avid Penguins fan, a lover of pirogies, and an expert bargain hunter.

ENGL 432W City/Country/Suburb: Place in Contemporary American Literature and Film

ENGL 434 Literary Criticism and Theory

ENGL 316 Health Care and Literature

UCOR 101 Thinking and Writing across the Curriculum

UCOR 102 Imaginative Lit. & Critical Writing

 "After the Fire Goes Out: Writing Before and After Treatment for an Affective Disorder." "Their Lives A Storm Whereon They Ride”: Writing with The Affective Disorders. Ed. Stephanie Stone Horton. FORTHCOMING. 

 “Is Baba Brennan ‘A Tougher Feminist Alternative?’: Gender and Irish Identity in Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls Trilogy.”  Which Direction Ireland?: Proceedings of the 2006 ACIS Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference. Ed. Donald McNamara. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 113-124.

 "Pleasantville and the Two Faces of Late Twentieth-Century Political Conservatism." Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (MAPACA) Conference. Pittsburgh, PA (November 2012).

"It’s the End of the World as We Know it: Sustainability and the American Suburbs after the Housing Crisis in Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers." From the Outside In: Sustainable Futures for Global Cities and Suburbs. Hofstra University Center for Suburban Studies. Hempstead, New York (November 2012).

 “‘Still We Cherish the City’: Women in Cities and Suburbs in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours.” Peripheral Visions: Suburbs, Innovation, and Representation. Kingston University Centre for Suburban Studies. Kingston, Surrey, UK (June 2011).

 “Good Fences, Charming Gates: Ethnicity, Family, and the Suburbs in a Novel by Alicia Erian.” Northeast Modern Language Association. Montréal, QC, Canada (April 2010).

 “Visions of Women’s Leadership in Suburban Novels: Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Erika Ellis’s Good Fences.” The Diverse Suburb. Hofstra University. Hempstead, NY (Oct 2009).

 “Designing the Suburbs and Redesigning Suburban Literature in D.J. Waldie’s Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir and David Beers’s Blue Sky Dreaming: A Memoir of America’s Fall from Grace.” College English Association Annual Conference. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (March 2009). 

  “Using Daniels’s Literature Circles to Introduce Literary Criticism to First-Year Students.” West Virginia University’s Graduate Symposium. Morgantown, West Virginia (March 2008).

 “‘I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind’: Emily Dickinson, Truth, and Self-Disclosure in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.” University of Louisville’s Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900. Louisville, Kentucky (February 2008).

 “Extinguishing Trick Candles: Denise Levertov’s ‘Tenebrae,’ the Vietnam War, and the American Civilian.” University of Louisville’s Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900. Louisville, Kentucky (February 2007). 

 “Is Baba Brennan ‘A Tougher Feminist Alternative?’: Gender and Irish Identity in Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls Trilogy.” American Conference for Irish Studies Mid-Atlantic Meeting. Kutztown, Pennsylvania (October 2006).

 “Sacrificing Septimus: Mrs. Dalloway and the Limits of Empathy.” Duquesne University’s Graduate Conference: The Politics and Perceptions of Social Justice. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (February 2006).