Martin Klammer
About
Education:Â Ph.D., English, University of Iowa; M.A., English, University of Iowa College of Law; M.A., Religion, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago; B.A., Honors English, University of Oregon
Martin Klammer, Professor of English, has been taking students to South Africa for J-term courses since 1998. His teaching interests include the American novel, South African literature, and Walt Whitman. Martin is the author of Whitman, Slavery, and the Emergence of Leaves of Grass (Penn State Press, 1995) and co-author of In the Dark With My Dress on Fire: My Life in Cape Town, London, Havana and Home Again (Cape Town: Jacana, 2010), a memoir of Blanche LaGuma, an underground activist and wife of celebrated novelist Alex La Guma.
ENGLISH 140 World Literature
This course focuses on Anglophone and English-translated literature across the globe, sampling culturally diverse works across time and place. It moves beyond English literatures of the U.S. and Britain, exploring writers from various national traditions, historical periods, and genres. Instructors may use theme-centered, genre-centered, and/or geographically specific approaches in order to frame effective class models, ultimately providing students with cross-cultural windows into literature and the human condition.
ENGLISH 350: American Literary Traditions
American literature, as Walt Whitman writes, “contains multitudes” and all those multitudes are talking to each other and to us. This course dives into both classic and historically marginalized texts, with attention to the traditions that inspired, influenced, or haunted them. By exploring a range of texts, we will discern how American literature records and shapes national conversations and culture. The course will focus on themes, genres, geographical regions, and literary movements that reflect the energy of American diversity.
PAIDEIA 450: South Africa: Young Lives Matter
In this course, students study the complicated and challenging lives of young people ages 5-18 in post-apartheid democratic South Africa and participate with a Cape Town non-profit organization in a summer program for disadvantaged youth in music, drama, and sports activities designed to encourage a sense of self-worth. Students will examine their privilege and the possibilities and limitations of using that privilege responsibly, navigate ethical dilemmas that may arise, and work to ensure respectful and impactful engagement with the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with whom we partner.
- Ph.D., English, University of Iowa, 1991
Dissertation: “The Web of Influences on Walt Whitman’s Representation of African-Americans in the 1855Â Leaves of Grass“ - M.A., English, University of Iowa, 1989
- M.A., Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1990
- Christ Seminary, Seminex, St. Louis, Missouri, 1981-1983
- B.A., Honors English, University of Oregon, 1980
My book, In the Dark with My Dress on Fire: My Life in Cape Town, London, Havana and Home Again, is making an important contribution to research into the roles of women of color in the struggle against apartheid. I assisted Blanche La Guma in writing her life story—growing up in a working class “colored” (mixed race) family in Cape Town, South Africa, working full-time as a nurse-midwife in poor communities, joining the Communist Party to become an activist fighting apartheid, and partnering with her husband, the novelist Alex La Guma, in continuing the struggle in exile in London and Havana, while raising two sons. Hers is a remarkable story that I am grateful to have had a hand in telling.
More recently, I am reexamining my earlier book in which I argued that the issue of slavery was a catalyst and inspiration for Walt Whitman’s great work Leaves of Grass. I am in the process of developing a deeper, more nuanced—and perhaps even contradictory—thesis about his attitudes and writing about race. I am eager to see where my research takes me!