Robert Lapp

Professor Emeritus

Website

Biography

During his 25 years in the Department (1997-2023), Dr. Lapp taught 18th and 19th-century British Literature with a specialization in the Romantic period. He also taught poetics, literary history, and, most recently, the ecological literature of the Anthropocene. He served as Head of the Department from 2011-2017 and from 2020-2023, leading two Unit Reviews in 2013 and 2022.

As a 3M National Teaching Fellow (2008) he was also active in Educational Leadership, including serving as President of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) from 2014-2017, and, most recently, as Co-Chair of the Maple League Teaching and Learning Committee (2019-2021).

He continues to be a strong advocate for the public performance of poetry and enjoys giving performances of literary works at community events and on local media. From 2017 to 2022, in collaboration with Bruce Wark of Sackville, he read one poem a week (for a total of 166 poems) as the “Poetry Lover” on CBC NB Radio One’s late afternoon show Shift, hosted by Vanessa Vandervalk.

Publications

Selected Publications

Contest for Cultural Authority: Hazlitt, Coleridge, and the Distresses of the Regency. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. [PR 4484 L37 1999]

"Authorship in Eighteen Hundred and Eleven : An Integral Approach." English Studies in Canada 38.2 (June 2012): 49-70.

"Gateways in Higher Education: the STLHE Comes to Halifax," Focus on University Teaching and Learning 25.1 (June 2017).

"Romanticism Repackaged: New Faces of 'Old Man' Coleridge" in Fraser's Magazine , 1830-32" European Romantic Review 11:2 (Spring 2000).

"My First Acquaintance with Critics." The New Quarterly 117 (Spring 2011).

Review of Anna Laetitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment by William McCarthy. Religion in the Age of Enlightenment 2 (2010).

“The Englishman’s Magazine.” Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism. Ed Laurel Brake and Marysa Denmoor. London: Academia Press and the British Library, 2009.

“‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ (William Wordsworth)." Companion to Literary Romanticism. NY: Facts on File, 2009.

“‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (John Keats).” Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. NY: Facts on File, 2010.

“‘A Summer Evening’s Meditation’ (Anna Laetitia Barbauld).” Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. New York: Facts on File, 2010.

“The Swing Riots.” Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism. New York: Facts on File, 2010.

Education

B.A. (University of Toronto, 1978)

M.A. (University of Toronto, 1985)

Ph.D. (Dalhousie University, 1997)

Teaching

Courses Taught

Literature, the Arts and Humanities

Introduction to the Principles of Literary Analysis

Introduction to Poetry

Literary Periods to 1800

Literary Periods, 1800-Present

Restoration and Augustan Literature

Literature of the Enlightenment

Literature in the Age of Romanticism

Regency Literature

Early Victorian Literature

Late Victorian Literature

Literature and the Natural World

4000-level seminar courses taught:

Ecofiction of Forest Ecology (winter 2023)

Ecopoetics (Winter 2020)

Transatlantic Romanticism (Winter 2016)

Romantic Ecology (Winter 2012)

The Night in Literature (Fall 2007)

Literary Representations of the 1830s (Fall 2005)

Prose of the 1820s (Winter 2003)

Literature of the 1830s (Winter 2001)

Honours Theses, Independent Studies, and Summer Research Supervisions

Tess Casher, “Leviathans and Language: How Rhetorical Strategies in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick Can Influence Readers’ Perceptions of Sociopolitical Ideas (Honours Thesis, 2022-23)

Tess Casher, “Dickens’s Ghosts” (Independent Study Supervision, 2023)

Lili Simpson, “Footsteps: The Visual and Literary Vocabulary of the Tantramar” (Summer Research Grant Supervision, 2022)

(Co-supervision) Kennedy Longaphie, “Seeing Harm: Visual Violence in Early Modern English Tragedy” (Honours thesis, 2019-2020)

Cecilia Stuart, "She Has Seeds under Her Tongue: Biosemiotic Ecofeminism in Canadian Women's Poetry" (Honours Thesis, 2017-18)

Renée Belliveau, "Disruptive Heroines: Transatlantic Proto-feminism in the 1860s Sensation Fiction of Mary E. Braddon & Louisa M. Alcott" (Honours Thesis, 2016-17)

Victoria Vallière, "Faith in Literature: A Post-secular Approach" (Honours Thesis, 2016-17)

Miriam Farhloul, "Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Ethical Imagination" (Summer Research Supervision, 2014)

Amber Tucker, The Tradition of Radical Poetics in Blake, Shelley, Whitman, and Ginsberg" (Honours Thesis, 2013-14)

Sean McDonell, "The Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells" (Summer Research Superivision, 2013)

Brigitte Desroches, "Traversing the In-between: Encountering Liminal Spaces in Medieval and Romantic Literatures" (Summer Research Supervision, 2013)

Sean McDonell, "A Handbook for Writers: Elements of Literary Composition" (Summer Research Supervision, 2012)

Caroline Wong, "How the Tories Stole Carnival: Folk Culture in Post-Interregnum Satire" (Summer Research Supervision, 2012)

Bernard Soubry, "Grappling with Gyres: Yeat's Poetry and the Tension of Eras", Co-supervised with Dr. Peter Brown (Independent Studies Supervision, 2012)

Ashley Steeves and Thomas Woodbury, Children's Literature, 1800-Present (Independent Studies Supervision, 2010)

Grants, awards & honours

3M National Teaching Fellowship, 2008

J. E. A. Crake Teaching Award in the Arts (�r��TV��Ƶ), 2005

Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU) Distinguished Teacher Award, 2003

Herbert and Leota Tucker Teaching Award (�r��TV��Ƶ), 2003