R 2 - 3pm
Biography
PhD Candidate, UC Davis 2021 - Present
M.F.A in Poetry, University of Michigan, 2019
B.A. in English, Macalester College, 2014
Research Interests
Augusta Funk is a poet and scholar who works at the intersections of poetics, memory studies, and critical aesthetics. Her dissertations considers how premature forms of minoritized death are staged as illegible residues within North American poetic texts. For these poets, writing is an alchemical practice, contingent upon the categories of the residual and the immaterial. Such qualities allow them to challenge the concept of textuality as a fixed representation of the past, and instead, alchemize its illegible traces into sites of political struggle. Through their experiments with documents, dictation, and memory, these poets critique the hegemonic control of history and instead propose more fluid forms of memorialization that span aesthetic categories such as the decorative, the atmospheric, and the burning image. Engaging critical race theory, anthropology, and psychoanalysis, this project addresses questions of political belonging, aesthetic experimentation, and the ongoing racial violence that constitutes the settlement of the Americas.
Fields of Interest
Poetry and Poetics, Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies, Queer Theory, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Black Studies, Abolitionist Thought
Presentations
- "Images and Hearts Aflame: Visualizing History in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee" ASLE 2025 Biennial Conference, College Park ME July 2025
- "Muriel Ruekyser's Recorded Silence: The Politics of the Poetry Reading" Uncommon Senses V Montreal, Quebec May 2025
- "The Anti-Anti Lyric: Reading Abolition Beyond the Human in Gwendolyn Brooks's 'In the Mecca'" ASLE 2023 Biennial Conference, Portland OR July 2023
- "Landscapes of Cohabitation in Hannah Weiner's Clairvoyant Journal" 2022 ASAP/13, Los Angeles CA September 2022
Publications
- Poems in Witness, Poetry Northwest, Interim, Massachusetts Review, Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Fairy Tale Review, Four Way Review, Cream City Review, The Offing, and elsewhere.
- Book reviews in Michigan Quarterly Review and Quarterly West.
Honors and Awards
- Dean's Summer Fellowship, 2024
- David Noel Miller Prize for Best Critical Essay, 2022
Teaching
- ENL3, UC Davis Fall 2024 - Present
- UWP1Y, UC Davis Fall 2023 - Spring 2024
- UWP1, UC Davis Fall 2022 - Spring 2023
- TA, UC Davis ENL180, ENL130, and ENL185C Fall 2021 - Spring 2022
- ENL 225, University of Michigan Spring 2019
- ENL125, University of Michigan Fall 2018
- Peer Writing Tutor, Macalester College Fall 2011-Spring 2014