The Online Dating Guy
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Author Bio
Mark Allister is a laid-back SoCal beach bum who happened to land in Minnesota and has somehow stayed, teaching at St. Olaf College for the past twenty-four years. Mark teaches English, Environmental Studies and American Studies. In his most serious moments he teaches and writes and talks about politics; in his somewhat serious moments he cooks and gardens and takes care of his 35 acres out in the country, chopping wood and watching birds; in his playful moments, he goofs around with his kids and friends and horses. Mark spent spring of 2008 teaching at the University of Bucharest in Romania, where he was a Fulbright Fellow.
If you really want to know things about the author, read Mark’s book Dated: A Middle-Aged Guy’s Online Search for Love, which is the long and R-rated version of a bio.
If you really want to know things about the author, read Mark’s book Dated: A Middle-Aged Guy’s Online Search for Love, which is the long and R-rated version of a bio.
Other books by Mark Allister (available at Amazon.com)
Refiguring the Map of Sorrow: Nature Writing and Autobiography (U of Virginia Press, 2001)
"This balanced contribution to ecocriticism examines autobiographical works that focus on grief, the mourning process, and the interaction of the human world with the world of nature. Comprising close readings of Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge (1991), Bill Barich's Laughing in the Hills (1980), Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces (1985), Peter Mathiessen's The Snow Leopard (1978), Sue Hubbell's A Country Year (1986), and William Least Moon Heat's Blue Highways (1982), the volume offers critical insight into autobiography as Allister examines theoretical and artistic implications. Allister is interested in how these authors work through their grief, and he finds that they do so by extending themselves into the natural world and into the built environment. He applies an ecological term, ecotone, to the works he studies, defining them as border cases in which major perspectives of the human and natural worlds meet. In this regard, this work follows in the critical footsteps of centrally located ecocriticism as defined in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (1996): the 'desire to articulate the intricate webs of relations in the natural world -- one foot in literature and the other on land.' Highly recommended for upper-division undergraduates through faculty." – CHOICE
Refiguring the Map of Sorrow: Nature Writing and Autobiography (U of Virginia Press, 2001)
"This balanced contribution to ecocriticism examines autobiographical works that focus on grief, the mourning process, and the interaction of the human world with the world of nature. Comprising close readings of Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge (1991), Bill Barich's Laughing in the Hills (1980), Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces (1985), Peter Mathiessen's The Snow Leopard (1978), Sue Hubbell's A Country Year (1986), and William Least Moon Heat's Blue Highways (1982), the volume offers critical insight into autobiography as Allister examines theoretical and artistic implications. Allister is interested in how these authors work through their grief, and he finds that they do so by extending themselves into the natural world and into the built environment. He applies an ecological term, ecotone, to the works he studies, defining them as border cases in which major perspectives of the human and natural worlds meet. In this regard, this work follows in the critical footsteps of centrally located ecocriticism as defined in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (1996): the 'desire to articulate the intricate webs of relations in the natural world -- one foot in literature and the other on land.' Highly recommended for upper-division undergraduates through faculty." – CHOICE
Eco-Man: New Perspectives on Masculinity and Nature, ed. (U. of Virginia Press, 2004)
The paradoxical role nature plays in American myth and history grows in part from the male's fascination with the wilderness and his equally strong impulse to dominate it. Many canonical literary works look to the wild as the site for establishing a man's selfhood. But nature is just as often subjected to his most violent displays of mastery.
This tension lies at the heart of Eco-Man, which brings together two rapidly growing fields: men's studies and ecocriticism. The two disciplines have rarely if ever touched on each other; brought together, men's studies is freed from the typical limitation of an exclusively urban-centered perspective, while ecocriticism engages an "ecomasculine" lens through which to view the field. The book's contents are diverse, but the contributors all challenge our idea of masculinity as merely the social code of patriarchy. By complicating our cultural notions of nature and masculinity, the volume's twenty essays question whether we can construct a notion of manhood around ecological principles and practices-and if so, what this would look like, and how it would enrich men's studies.
The varied assembly of contributors to Eco-Man -- including historians, philosophers, poets, both male and female -- have all written with the general reader in mind. The result is a book as approachable as it is groundbreaking.
