Michael M. Weinstein, Ph.D.

About me

At Earlham, I design and teach a wide range of undergraduate courses, with specializations in the following areas: poetry and poetics, creative nonfiction, literary translation studies, modernist studies, visual culture studies, queer/transgender studies, disability studies, and critical theory. My scholarly research focuses on modernist approaches to the relationship between text and image; I am particularly interested in how the hybrid forms of early-twentieth-century media offer opportunities to conceive of non-normative embodiment and minority identity in new ways.

Prior to joining the faculty at Earlham, I worked as an Educational Consultant at MatchPoint College and Career Services and served as a Helen Zell Creative Writing Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Michigan, where I received my Master of Fine Arts degree in May of 2020. I have taught as a lecturer in the Departments of Slavic Languages and Literatures and English at Yale University and as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University, where I received a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature in 2017.

My poems, essays, and translations from the Russian have appeared in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Review of Books, Conjunctions, Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets 2020, The Iowa Review, Poets.org, and elsewhere. I am also an avid amateur photographer.

Education

• Ph.D., Harvard University
• M.F.A., University of Michigan

Why do you teach at Earlham?

I was drawn to teaching at Earlham thanks to the atmosphere of mutual goodwill, open-mindedness and respect that pervades all of the interactions on campus, in class and out. Earlham students are smart, motivated, curious, and committed to improving the world.

Published works

Prose

• “The Blue Cane.” The Iowa Review, Summer 2022. [print]
• “The Guts of the Living: On Polina Barskova’s Air Raid, with Ainsley Morse. Los Angeles Review of Books, January 2022.
• “Who’s Afraid of Transgender Kids?” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 2021.
• “Lucia Perillo’s ‘Medicine.’” Michigan Quarterly Review online, January 2021.
• “Language is Evidence: An Interview with Justin Monson.” MQR online, October 2020.
• “’A Creature of the Senses’: Ilya Kaminsky.” MQR online, February 2020.
• “Sophie Klahr’s ‘Motel, Arizona.’” MQR online, January 2020.
• “Worldplay: Gennady Aygi’s Love Letter to the Russian Avant-Garde.” MQR online, October 2019.
• “Sohrab Sepehri’s ‘Toward the Image of the Friend.’ MQR online, April 2019.
• “’Words for those who don’t speak them’: Review and Interview on Aby Kaupang and Matthew Cooperman’s NOS.” MQR online, December 2018.
• “Becoming Disabled.” The New Yorker online, December 2016.
• “A Professor’s Memoir of Life Inside a Ravaged Body.” The New Yorker online, April 2016.
• “Things a Body Won’t Tell: Melody Melamed’s Transgender Portraits.” The New Yorker online, November 2015.

Poetry

• “Tarkovsky,” Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, February 2021.
• “Blue Screen Pastoral,” 32 Poems, 18:2, January 2021.
• “Anniversary,” Best New Poets 2020 (UVA Press), December 2020. [print]
• “Anniversary,” Poets.org (The Academy of American Poets), online.
• “The Civil Surgeon, “Cut,” and “August 25,” Conjunctions 69, November 2017. [print]
• “The Civil Surgeon,” Cut,” and “Vantage Point,” The Adroit Journal 25, 2017.
• Poetry by Linor Goralik (translation), in Found Life (Columbia UP), November 2017. [print]
• “Lifetime Guarantee” and “Those Moments Were Historical,” Boston Review, April 2016.
• “I’m Sad I’m Not a Beast” and “Official Happiness,” The Harvard Advocate, Summer 2015.
• “Memory Palace,” Thrush, July 2014.
• “Apology” and “Prior to Vacating the Unit,” Foothill 3.2, Fall 2014.
• “Poetry Portfolio #71: Stanislav Lvovsky,” (translation), Molossus World Poetry Portfolio, 2014.