Stephen Hock
Associate Professor of English
Degrees Held
B.A., Haverford College
M.A., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Office Location: 101 Eggleston Commons, Bray Village
Phone: 757-233-8734
Email: shock@vwu.edu
Department/s:
-
Stephen Hock received his bachelor's degree from Haverford College with a major in Comparative Literature, and his master's and doctorate in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. His teaching includes courses in first-year composition, the art of comic books, film adaptations of literature, the Great American Novel, the postmodern, and American literary history; he also regularly teaches the English major's core courses in poetry & drama, fiction & criticism, and literary theory, as well as the English major's senior thesis workshop. His scholarly work focuses on contemporary American literature and culture, with current projects on the recent work of Thomas Pynchon and on mythic temporalities in Spider-Man comic books.
Book Chapters
- "'This Can't Be America':聽 Intersecting Communities in Big Black:聽 Stand at Attica."聽 Documenting Lives:聽 Comics, Representation, and Activism across Cultures, edited by Smita Jha, Abhilasha Gusain, and Amritha R. Krishnan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026, pp. 17-28.
- "The Freedom of 'the Endland of the Convergence' or 'the Long Soft Life' in DeLillo's Zero K."聽 Figures of Freedom:聽 Representations of Agency in a Time of Crisis, edited by Randy Laist and Brian A. Dixon, Fourth Horseman Press, 2024, pp. 71-90.
- "The Breakfast Club, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Riverdale's '80s Palimpsest."聽 The '80s Resurrected:聽 Essays on the Decade in Popular Culture Then and Now, edited by Randy Laist, McFarland, 2023, pp. 23-36.
- "'Just Junk in a Safeway Cart I'm Pushing Down to the Recycling Center':聽 The Aesthetics of Ecology in Michael Robbins's Poetry."聽 Modern Ecopoetry:聽 Reading the Palimpsest of the More-Than-Human World, edited by Leonor Mar铆a Mart铆nez Serrano and Cristina M. G谩mez-Fern谩ndez, Brill, 2021, pp. 171-86.
- "Memorializing the Future of Donald Trump in Amy Waldman's The Submission."聽 Trump Fiction:聽 Essays on Donald Trump in Literature, Film, and Television, edited by Stephen Hock, Lexington Books, 2020, pp. 79-95.
- "The Black Box of Genre in Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist and Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe." The Poetics of Genre in the Contemporary Novel, edited by Tim Lanzend枚rfer, Lexington Books, 2016, pp. 57-71.
- "Maybe He'd Have to Just Keep Driving, or Pynchon on the Freeway."聽 Pynchon's California, edited by Scott McClintock and John Miller, University of Iowa Press, 2014, pp. 201-19.
- "Comix Remix; or, The Strange Case of Mr. Chabon."聽 Michael Chabon's America:聽 Magical Words, Secret Worlds, and Sacred Spaces, edited by Jesse Kavadlo and Bob Batchelor, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, pp. 81-96.
- "This Is Too Big for One Old Name:聽 Hitchcock and Smithee in the Signature Centrifuge."聽 Directed by Allen Smithee, edited by Jeremy Braddock and Stephen Hock, University of Minnesota Press, 2001, pp. 175-205.
Journal Articles
- "'That's Your Uncle?聽 He's White!' 'Yeah, a Long Time':聽 Negotiating Whiteness in the Rocky/Creed Series."聽 Italian Americana, vol. 35, no. 2, 2017, pp. 145-68.
- "'A Need to Mourn Abandonment in Advance' in Nathaniel Mackey's From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate."聽 Contemporary Literature, vol. 55, no. 3, 2014, pp. 534-58.
- "'Stories Told Sideways Out of the Big Mouth':聽 John Dos Passos's Bazinian Camera Eye."聽 Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 1, 2005, pp. 20-27.
Edited Collections
- Editor and Introduction.聽 Trump Fiction:聽 Essays on Donald Trump in Literature, Film, and Television.聽 Lexington Books, 2020.
- With Jeremy Braddock, editors and introduction.聽 Directed by Allen Smithee.聽 University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Creative
"'All My Life My Writing Is':聽 The Auto-Bio-Graph of Smalloysius F.:聽 Being Told by Itself."聽 The Anthology of Babel, edited by Ed Simon, Punctum Books, 2020, pp. 323-44.Spring 2026 Office Hours
Mondays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays: 1:00-3:00 p.m., and by appointment.