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, queer and trans literatures, modernist studies, visual culture studies, disability studies, and critical theory. My 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 new ways to conceive of non-normative embodiments and minority identities.

In addition to co-advising the student editors of Earlham’s literary magazine, The Crucible, I publish poems and essays in venues including 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. My debut poetry collection, Saint Consequence, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2025.

When I’m not working, I love to be active and spend time outside. I am also an avid amateur photographer.

Education

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

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.
• “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.
• “Worldplay: Gennady Aygi’s Love Letter to the Russian Avant-Garde.”  Michigan Quarterly Review, October 2019.
• “’Words for those who don’t speak them’: Review and Interview on Aby Kaupang and Matthew Cooperman’s NOS.” Michigan Quarterly Review, December 2018.
• “Becoming Disabled.” The New Yorker, December 2016.

Poetry

• “Dead Name” and “Trans People of the Past,” The Kenyon Review, Fall 2023.
• “Gender Clinic,” Columbia Journal, Spring 2023.
• “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.
• “Anniversary,” Poets.org (The Academy of American Poets).
• “The Civil Surgeon, “Cut,” and “August 25,” Conjunctions 69, November 2017.
• “The Civil Surgeon,” Cut,” and “Vantage Point,” The Adroit Journal 25, 2017.
• Poetry by Linor Goralik (translation), in Found Life (Columbia UP), November 2017.
• “Lifetime Guarantee” and “Those Moments Were Historical,” Boston Review, April 2016.