Vince Casaregola, Ph.D.
Professor
English
Education
Ph.D., English, The University of Iowa
Dissertation:
“Inventions for Voice: Humanist Rhetoric and the Experiments of Elizabethan Prose Fiction”
M.A., English, John Carroll University, 1978
A.B., English, John Carroll University, 1976
Research Interests
20th and 21st Century American Literature and Film
Rhetoric and Media Studies
Creative Writing
Literature and Medicine
In both my scholarship and my teaching, I explore a range of issues, largely in the modern and contemporary American context, where literature and other media intersect and overlap to represent a complex and often conflicted cultural history. My approaches are rooted in both historical examination and rhetorical analysis. While theoretically eclectic, my work is heavily influenced by that of Walter Ong, one of the first major scholars to use rhetorical theory and the history of media to engage in both broad-based and intricately detailed cultural history.
Interwoven with these scholarly interests is an active commitment to creative writing, most often in poetry but also in fiction and creative nonfiction. During the past decade, and especially since the COVID pandemic, much of my creative work has focused on illness and trauma.
My current projects include research for a monograph about American dark film of the “long 1950s” (1945-1964), as well as development of a new collection of poetry.
Professional Experience
I have worked as a writer, editor, and writing consultant in a variety of business, professional, and technical settings. More recently, I have begun to provide administrative and academic consulting to other institutions, as well as manuscript reviewing services to publishers. In the past I have written public relations and/or technical material for both industrial and institutional clients.
Publications and Media Placements
Books
Vital Signs, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, July 2025.[Poetry collection focusing on the experience of illness, loss, and trauma.]
Theaters of War: America’s Perceptions of World War II. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009. [Scholarly monograph concerning the history of literary
and cinematic representations of the American combat experience in World War II.]
Selected Academic Articles and Book Chapters
"From Hainan to Grant Avenue: Teaching Gender Construction as Integration Propaganda in Two Films about Chinese Women." Teaching Films from the People's Republic of China, edited by Zhuoyi Wang, Emily Wilcox, and Hongmei Yu, MLA, 2024, 229-240.
“ ‘Prior Justification’ ”: Neo-World War II Films as Rhetorical Appeals for “Just War” in the New Millennium.” LIT (Literature/Interpretation/Theory) Issue 34/2, 2023.
“What We Talk about When We Talk about Voice.” Traditions of Eloquence. Eds. Cinthia Gannett and John Brereton. Fordham University Press, 2016.
“War in The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Haunted Visions of World War II.” Horrors of War: The Undead on the Battlefield. Eds. Cynthia A. Miller and A. Bowdoin van Riper. Rowman and Littlefield, 2015.
“A Loss for Words: Sounding the Depth of What We Profess in College English.” Invited paper for the Creighton University Symposium “The Catholic Intellectual Tradition,” March 2009. Paper published in the symposium collection in the Journal of Religion and Society, Supplement Series, Supplement 6 (Spring, 2011).
"The Exact Location of the Voice: Walter Ong and the Embodiment of Discourse.” Proceedings of the 10th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention, June 19-21, 2009.
Selected Poetry, Nonfiction, Fiction
[Unless otherwise noted, creative publications are poetry.]
“Who Mourns the Fragments.” La Piccioletta Barca (forthcoming, June 24, 2024).
“Wood Wound Pareidolia,” “Gravity,” and “August 6 with Kokeshi Dolls.” The Write Launch. May 17, 2024. https://thewritelaunch.com/2024/05/wood-wound-pareidolia-gravity-and-august-6-with-kokeshi-dolls/
“Paper Rags” (nonfiction). Tahoma Literary Review (TLR). Issue 26 (Spring 2024). https://tahomaliteraryreview.com/selections/paper-rags/
“The Time Mouse.” The Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley. Volume 24, 2024.
“Therapy Suite” (short story). North American Review (Open Space online), October 19, 2023. https://northamericanreview.org/open-space/fiction-vincent-casaregola-0
"Strange Fall Fruit," "8816," and "Child, Do Not Be Sad." Decolonial Passage, October 2023. https://thedecolonialpassage.net/2023/10/05/strange-fall-fruit/
“TԾٱ.” Topical Poetry, August 13, 2023. https://topicalpoetry.com/trinitite/
“GǾԲ” (flash fiction). Compass Rose Literary Journal, July 2023.
https://www.compassroseliterary.com/going
“E貹ٳ” (short story). The Write Launch, March 2023.
“Call It” and “There is Nothing to Say.” Medicine and Meaning. Winter/Spring 2023.
https://medicineandmeaning.uams.edu/call-it/ https://medicineandmeaning.uams.edu/there-is-nothing-to-say/
“Fragments in COVID Time.” Blood and Thunder: Humanities Journal of the U. of Oklahoma Medical School, 2022/2023 combined issue.
“Simple Ending,” in the anthology Before the Cameras Leave Ukraine. Black Spring Press, 2023.
(Fundraising anthology for Ukrainian refugees relocated to the UK).
“E泦ٱ” (flash fiction), Lifelines (The Literary and Art Magazine of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth). Vol. 12, 30. https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/0/1164/files/2022/10/Lifelines-Vol.-12-1.pdf
“Evening on the Porch” (flash fiction). On the Run. February 11, 2022.
https://www.ontherunfiction.com/stories/evening-on-the-porch
“In the Heat of the Moon” and “Dark Matter.” The Write Launch (Issue 51 / 2021). https://thewritelaunch.com/author/vincent-casaregola/
“The Life of the Ball Turret Gunner” and “The Word Lady,” in Please See Me, #4, March 31st, 2020. https://pleaseseeme.com/issue-4/poetry/two-poems-vincent-casaregola/
“Never Send,” The Bellevue Literary Review, NYU School of Medicine, 2019.
“Respiratory Monitor,” Lifelines (Literary Journal of the Dartmouth University School of Medicine), January 2018.
“Riddle of the Open Heart” (award winner) and “A Matter of Perception.” Blood and Thunder (Literary Journal of the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine), Fall, 2017.
Podcasts
From Here to Eternity (1953) and Adaptations of Military Novels with Vincent Casaregola, Ph.D. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-here-to-eternity-1953-and-adaptations-of/id1485109898?i=1000579632700
Dr. Strangelove (on Old Soul at the Movies, Sept. 11, 2021) -- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-strangelove-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and/id1485109898?i=1000535836975
A Face in the Crowd (on Old Soul at the Movies, April 10, 2021) -- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-face-in-the-crowd-1957-with-vincent-casaregola-ph-d/id1485109898?i=1000516523563
Hollywood after World War II (on Old Soul at the Movies, August 20, 2020) -- https://www.audacy.com/podcasts/the-old-soul-movie-podcast-37569/hollywood-after-world-war-ii-with-vincent-casaregola-phd-325195814
Honors and Awards
2017 – Best of Poetry Award – Blood and Thunder (Literary Journal of the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine), for best poem published that year (“Riddle of the Open Heart”).
2015 – Deane Wagner Poetry Contest (St. Louis Writers’ Guild), Second Place.
2014 – James H. Nash Poetry Competition (St. Louis Poetry Center), First Place.
2012 — “Golden Apple Award” for Excellence in Teaching, Advising, and Mentoring, from the English Graduate Organization.
2009 — Special Achievement Award for Service as Writing Program Director, awarded the English Graduate Organization, Department of English, Saint Louis University.
2003 — Faculty Excellence Award from the Student Government Association, Saint Louis University.
2002 — Finch Award for Excellence in Mentoring — College of Arts and Sciences, Saint Louis University.
1987—First Prize (Literary Non-Fiction), New Letters Literary Awards (New Letters Magazine, University of Missouri--Kansas City), for the personal essay listed above, “Harvesting Debris.” [This is an annual, national contest, and in 1987 it was judged by essayist Diane Johnson.]