ACADEMIC WORKS
M.P. Nolan is part of an emerging field known as Persona Studies. Scholars in this field use interdisciplinary research in order to interrogate theories and practices related to perceptions and/or facades of the self. As a writer and poet, Nolan's focus is often on writerly identification or the poet-self, but she is also heavily interested in these ideas as they relate to detective fiction and student writers as well. This research has additionally led to a focus on the spaces between identities, fiction and reality, and various movements or ways of thinking. Recently, she has been working primarily with the works of modern poets in order to better understand the benefits of their methods of fragmentation or impersonal poetics in these terms. Thus, as an academic compositonist she primarily researches and practices Multigenre Writing.
AT THE THRESHOLD OF SENSIBILITY:
THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF WRITERLY IDENTITY FRAGMENTATION
Doctoral Dissertation
St. John's University
2015
Expressions of written identity are compound amalgams, as the delicate balance between fictional and real often transcends corporeal standards in necessary and exciting ways— especially when a writer subverts the very conventions of his/her applied language. Therefore, this dissertation is an interdisciplinary, multigenre project that explores the terms of the writer’s own identity in relation to lingual constraints through a process referred to as fragmentation (or the act of depersonalizing the individual by dividing it into multiple entities), because it suggests that this process is essential to challenging the borders of the written self.
“LEARNING TO CIRCUMVENT THE LINGUAL LIMITATIONS OF THE WRITTEN SELF:
THE RHETORICAL BENEFITS OF POETIC FRAGMENTATION AND INTERNET 'CATFISHING'”
Article in
Persona Studies Journal
2015
One of the most complex relationships we have to convey as humans is the written identification of that which we call the self. Despite the fact that we are multifaceted beings, contemporary lingual limitations often force the perception of the individual as a definitive entity through three fundamental normative communication standards: authority, authenticity and moral accountability. This essay examines the resulting paradoxes of writerly identity in relation to these constructs, and simultaneously proposes that the way to rectify such issues is to embrace disparate identity performances of writings past and present.
"COMMANDER ADAM DALGLIESH"
Chapter in
100 Greatest Literary Detectives
2018
“If he’s as good a detective as he is a poet, he’s a dangerous man.”
- A Taste of Death, P.D. James
It is his keen understanding of the subtlety of words that makes P.D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh both a remarkable detective and a well-respected poet. Some describe this character as Byronic, and this is an accurate portrayal, if only one-sided, as Dalgliesh is also unmistakably modern in his multiplicity.
“MULTIPLICITY AND THE STUDENT WRITER:
EMBRACING CREATIVE MULTIGENRE IDENTITY WORK IN THE WRITING CLASSROOM”
Chapter in
Exquisite Corpse:
Art-Based Writing Practices in the Academy
2019
This collection draws from the processes and pedagogies of artists and designers to reconcile disparate discourses in rhetoric and composition pertaining to 3Ms (multimodal, multimedia, multigenre), multiliteracies, translingualism, and electracy.
"THE SOCIALLY MOBILE FEMALE IN VICTORIAN AND NEO-VICTORIAN MYSTERIES"
Chapter in
Transnational Crime Fiction: Mobility, Borders and Detection
Summer 2020
Women in contemporary mysteries are the most flexible and mobile bodies, as a great deal hinges on their abilities to consciously and physically exist among the upper and lower classes and consistently blur or defy gender expectations in decidedly uncharacteristic ways.
Through historical, sociological and literary research, this paper examines the evolution of perceptions of social mobility for Victorian women in mysteries then and now in order to determine if these modern depictions are in-keeping with the original reasons for such border crossing, or if they are more indicative of a post-feminist culture re-envisioning the female’s role in society.
"INSTITUTIONAL PARADOX IN THE CITY: DUALITY, DOMICILES, AND DEATH IN DICKENS’S LONDON"
Essay in
Mean Streets: A Journal of American Crime and Detective Fiction
May, 2021
This essay analyzes how Dickens uses descriptions of the domiciles and the death scenes of four character pairs to highlight social disorder within the systems of justice, commerce, welfare, and social hierarchy respectively and reveal stark contradictions within these heavily ingrained (and often cherished) constructs of urban society.
"THE INVOLUNTARY MASKS OF THE POET: EXAMINING THE EVOLUTION OF THE POET PERSONA THROUGH P.D. JAMES'S ADAM DALGLIESH"
Essay in
Persona Studies
December 2021
This essay examines historical perspectives of the Poet persona (traditionally defined and articulated by poets themselves) alongside a contemporary depiction of the Poet in the novel-sphere. More specifically, it considers the protagonist from P.D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh mysteries. This essay argues that Dalgliesh not only serves as an exemplification of the modern Poet but also reveals those aspects of the Poet persona which have withstood the perceived distortions of time.
THE CROSSROADS OF CRIME WRITING: UNSEEN STRUCTURES AND UNCERTAIN SPACES
Book
Anthem Press
March 2024
This volume argues that we must examine the boundaries in fiction and non-fiction crime writing with an awareness of and turn toward the unseen structures and spatial uncertainties that so often lead to and reflect collective fears and anxieties. The chapters within utilize theories of cultural memory and/or deep mapping to facilitate this process.
FORTHCOMING WORKS
"REFRAMING THE PRINCIPLES OF WRITERLY IDENTITY WITH THE WORKS OF FERNANDO PESSOA AND OTHER MODERNIST POETS”
Chapter in
Approaches to Teaching Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet
TBD
Forthcoming from Modern Language Association (MLA) Publications 2024
THE CROSSROADS OF CRIME WRITING: HISTORICAL, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
Book
featuring chapters from several contributors
TBD
Forthcoming from Anthem Press 2024
March 11 - 14, 2021
Virtual Conference
NORTHEAST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION (NEMLA)
"Modern Marriage and Female Detection"
April 7 - 10, 2021
Virtual Conference
COLLEGE COMPOSITION AND COMMUNICATION (CCCC)
"Reflection, Fragmentation, and Improvisation: Meaning Making in Virtual and Traditional Classrooms through Inclusive Pedagogies"
March 26 - 28, 2020
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
COLLEGE COMPOSITION AND COMMUNICATION (CCCC)
"Meaning Making and Inclusive Pedagogies through Reflection, Fragmentation, and Improvisation"
January 9 - 12, 2020
Seattle, Washington
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION (MLA)
"Writing Identity from Coast to Coast: Developing Self and Social Awareness through Creative Writing Pedagogy in Composition and/ or Literature"
November 8 - 9, 2019
Purchase College
SUNY COUNCIL ON WRITING (COW)
"Embracing Multigenre Identity Work in the Writing Classroom: The Creative Self in Society Project"
May 15 - 17, 2019
Malaga, Spain
(NEO-)VICTORIAN ‘ORIENTATIONS’ IN
THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CONFERENCE
"The Charitable and the Chastened: Perceptions of the Socially Mobile Female in Victorian Mysteries Then and Now"