USC.edu

Catherine Theis

Instructor
Catherine Theis
Pronouns She / Her / Hers Email ctheis@usc.edu Office THH

Biography

Catherine Theis is the author of MEDEA (Plays Inverse, 2017) and The Fraud of Good Sleep (Salt Modern Poets, 2011). In October 2024, her translation of the Italian poet Jolanda Insana, Slashing Sounds, was published by the University of Chicago Press in their Phoenix Poets series. Her forthcoming collection of poems, By a Roman, will be published by Antiphony Press in October 2025. 

Theis’s work has been published in a collection of essays titled Classics in Modernist Translation (Bloomsbury, 2019), a volume that addresses modernist engagements with the literature of Greco-Roman antiquity. Her contribution, “Braving the elements: H.D.’s and Jeffers’ ‘transduction’ of Euripides,” explores the similarities between poets H.D. and Robinson Jeffers and their interest in the choral odes of Euripides’ The Bacchae.

Theis is co-editor of the book, The Sound of the Past: Modernist Echoes and Incantations in Eliot, H.D., and Woolf (Vernon Press).

Education

  • Ph.D. Literature and Creative Writing, University of Southern California, 8/2020
  • MFA Iowa Writers’ Workshop, 5/2004
  • MFA Univ Montana, 12/2001

  • Summary Statement of Research Interests

    My scholarly work engages with theories of phenomenology, poetics, and performance studies in twentieth-century poetry and prose; my creative work explores the intersection between lyric and dramatic traditions; my translation work, specifically on the Italian poet Jolanda Insana, draws on both my scholarly and creative work while also informing my teaching, which stretches from general education and writing courses to creative writing workshops.

    • (Fall 2023) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Green World– Ecopoetry, MW, 03:30pm – 04:50pm, OFFICE
    • (Fall 2023) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Through the Viewfinder–Literature and Photography, MW, 02:00pm – 03:20pm, LVL3B
    • (Spring 2024) ENGL 406. Poetry Writing, W, 04:30pm – 07:20pm
    • (Spring 2024) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Through the Viewfinder–Literature and Photography, MWF, 12:00pm – 12:50pm, KAP134
    • (Spring 2024) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Green Worlds–Ecopoetry, MWF, 01:00pm – 01:50pm, CPA254
    • (Spring 2024) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Green Worlds – Ecopoetry, MWF, 02:00pm – 02:50pm, GFS223
    • (Fall 2024) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Through the Viewfinder–Literature and Photography, MWF, 12:00pm – 12:50pm, WPH202
    • (Fall 2024) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Green Worlds–Ecopoetry, MWF, 01:00pm – 01:50pm, WPH201
    • (Fall 2024) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Green Worlds – Ecopoetry, MWF, 02:00pm – 02:50pm, THH108
    • (Spring 2025) ENGL 304. Introduction to Poetry Writing, T, 02:00pm – 04:50pm
    • (Spring 2025) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Through the Viewfinder–Literature and Photography, TTh, 09:30am – 10:50am, ZHS360
    • (Spring 2025) GESM 110. Seminar in the Arts – Green Worlds – Ecopoetry, TTh, 11:00am – 12:20pm, KAP159
    • (Fall 2025) ENGL 299g. Introduction to the Genre of Poetry, MW, 10:00am – 11:50am
    • (Fall 2025) ENGL 304. Introduction to Poetry Writing, W, 02:00pm – 04:50pm
    • (Fall 2025) ENGL 310. Editing for Writers, MW, 12:00pm – 01:50pm
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