This user has not added any information to their profile yet.
Dr. Randy Laist is a professor of English, Chair of the English Department, and Director of the Division of Arts and Humanities at the University of Bridgeport. He is the author of Rethinking Writing Instruction in the Age of AI, The Twin Towers in Film: A Cinematic History of the World Trade Center, Cinema of Simulation: Hyperreal Hollywood in the Long 1990s, and Technology and Postmodern Subjectivity in the Novels of Don DeLillo. He has also edited books of essays on various topics, including critical plant studies, the television show Lost, the Indiana Jones franchise, movies about college, retro representations of the 1980s, and Universal Design for Learning. His writing has appeared in Salon, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The New York Times. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife, assorted children, and Sigmund the cat.
Ph.D., English, University of Connecticut, May 2009
M.A., English, University of Connecticut, May 2002
M.A., Education, University of Connecticut, May 1998
B.A., English and Psychology, Summa cum laude, University of Connecticut, May 1996
Books
Rethinking Writing Instruction in the Age of AI: A UDL Approach. Cambridge: CAST Publishing, 2024. Print.
The Twin Towers in Film: A Cinematic History of New York’s World Trade Center. Jefferson: McFarland, Inc., 2020. Print.
Cinema of Simulation: Hyperreal Hollywood in the Long 1990s. NY: Bloomsbury, 2015. Print.
Technology and Postmodern Subjectivity in Don DeLillo’s Novels. NY: Peter Lang, Inc., 2010. Print.
Edited Books
Figures of Freedom in 21st-Century American Fiction. London: Fourth Horseman Press, 2024. Print.
The ’80s Resurrected: Essays on the Decade in Popular Culture Then and Now. Jefferson: McFarland, Inc. 2023. Print.
UDL University: Designing for Variability across the Higher Education Curriculum. With Nicole Brewer and Dana Sheehan. Cambridge, MA: CAST Publishing. 2022. Print.
Excavating Indiana Jones: Essays on the Films and Franchise. Jefferson: McFarland, Inc., 2020. Print.
Cinema U: Representations of Higher Education in Film. With Kip Kline. London: Fourth Horseman Press. 2018. Print.
Plants and Literature: Essays in Critical Plant Studies. NY: Rodopi Press. 2013. Print.
Looking for Lost: Critical Essays on the Enigmatic Series. Jefferson: McFarland, Inc.,
2011. Print.
Book Chapters
“Trump Zombies.” Post-Zombie. Ed. Wylie Lenz, Angela Tenga, and Kyle Bishop. McFarland. (Forthcoming).
“Technology.” Don DeLillo in Context. Ed. Jesse Kavadlo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 189-195. 2022. Print.
“You are not your Brand: Confronting the Spiritual Perils of Social Media.” Successes and Setbacks of Social Media. Ed. Cheyenne Seymour. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, 2021. 87-92. Print.
“‘The Art, the Artist, the Landscape, the Sky’: Ontological Crossings in Love-Lies-Bleeding.” Don DeLillo after the Millennium: Currents and Currencies. Ed. Jacqueline A. Zubeck. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. 157-68. Print.
“Hyperreality and the Western Imagination in Prospero’s Books.” Shakespeare on Screen: The Tempest and the Romances. Ed. Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 185-198. Print.
“Sartre’s Chestnut Tree and the Roots of Plant Horror.” Plant Horror: The Monstrous Vegetal. Ed. Dawn Keetley and Angela Tenga. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 163-178. Print.
“Exploring Ideas.” Discover the Writer in You: A Guide to College Composition. Ed. Phil Fox. Austin, TX: Sentia Publishing. 2016. Print.
“Hypersaurus Rex: Recombinant Reality in Jurassic Park.” Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity: The Birth of the Monster in Literature, Film, and Media. Ed. Andrea Wood and Brandy Schillace. NY: Cambria Press, 2014. 213-234. Print.
“Abyss of Simulation.” _Deconstructing Brad Pitt. Ed. Christopher Schaberg and Robert Bennett. NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. 78-93. Print.
“The Soft Bodies of Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Simulation in Media and Culture: Believing the Hype. Ed. Robin DeRosa. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. 69-76. Print.
“Soft Murders: Motion Pictures and Living Death in Diary of the Dead.” Generation Zombie: Essays on the Living Dead in Popular Culture. Ed. Stephanie Boluk and Wylie Lenz. Jefferson: McFarland, 2011. 101-112. Print.
“Showdown in the Café 80’s: Back to the Future as Baudrillardian Parable.” The Worlds of Back to the Future. Ed. Sorcha N. Fhlainn. Jefferson: McFarland, 2010. 216-31. Print.
Articles about Pedagogy and Academia
“Gen Z and the Humanities.” Inside Higher Ed. August 30, 2023.
“Making Feedback Meaningful: UDL-Based Solutions for Responding to Student Writing.” Teaching Professor. February 20, 2023.
“Stray Cats and Invisible Prejudices: A Metacognition Short-Take.” Improve with Metacognition. June 14, 2022. Web.
“An Experiment in Student-Generated Writing Tutorials.” National Teaching and Learning Forum 31(4): 2022. 9-11. Web.
“An Empathetic Approach to Writing Rubrics.” Teaching Professor. Jan 3, 2022. Web.
“‘Good Writing’: Defining It and Teaching It.” Transformative Dialogues. 14(2), 2021. 115-125. Print.
“Universal Design for Writing.” Novak Education. June 17, 2021. Web.
“Strategies for Conducting Online Student-Teacher Writing Conferences.” Teaching Professor. Sept 8, 2020. Web.
“Writing into the Unknown.” Weekly Teaching Tips Consortium. (2020). Web.
“Self-Publication takes the ‘Student’ out of ‘Student Writers.’” CollegeSTAR. (2020). Web.
“Four Practices to Avoid Barriers to Change.” TD Magazine. March 2, 2020. Print.
“Identifying Goals Helps Online Learners Sustain Self-Motivation.” Teaching Professor. Jan 6, 2020. Web.
“Ten Ways to Supercharge your Creativity.” Natural Awakenings. Dec 2019. 18-19. Print and Web.
“Prevent Student Errors with a Self-Paced Syllabus Quiz.” Teaching Professor August 19, 2019. Web.
“Student Writers Become YouTube Gurus.” CollegeSTAR. (2019). Web.
“Academic Conference Panels are Boring.” Chronicle of Higher Education 64.16 (Dec. 5, 2017). Print and web.
“Reduce your G: Evaluating and Optimizing the Use of Quantitative Feedback for Writing Students.” NERA Conference Proceedings 2017. OpenCommons@UConn (2017). Web.
“A Curriculum of Things: Exploring an Object-Oriented Pedagogy.” The National Teaching and Learning Forum 25.3 (2016). 1-4. Print.
“Stimulating Departmental Dialogue with a Pedagogy Book Club.” Academic Leader 31.10 (2015). 6-7. Print.
“Getting the Most out of Guest Experts Who Speak to Your Class.” Faculty Focus May 11, 2015. Web.
“Strategies for Addressing Grammar in Threaded Discussions.” Online Classroom 15.4 (2015). 5. Print.
“What can Evolutionary Psychology Teach Us about Pedagogy?” NEFDC Exchange 26.6 (2013). 11-14. Print.
“Five Ways a Blog-Style Assignment Can Jump-Start Student Writing.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 41.1 (2013). 75-76. Print.
“Teaching the American Dream.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 39.2 (2011): 194. Print.
“The Self-Deconstructing Canon: Teaching the Survey Course without Perpetuating Hegemony.” Currents in Teaching and Learning. 1.2 (2009): 50-57. Web.
Articles about Film, Literature, and Culture
“‘An Experience of the Impossible’: The Planetary Imagination in George Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon.” Film Criticism. (Forthcoming).
“Communicating with Plants: The Dream, the Science, the Everyday Reality.” Environmental Humanities. (Forthcoming).
“New Materialist Freedom in Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland.” Film-Philosophy. 28(2): 2024, 181-201. Web.
“Time/After-Time: Modes of ’80s Nostalgia.” Wide Screen 9(1): 2022. Print.
“What Do Shoes Do?” Aeon Magazine. 8/11/2020. Web.
“Heads a-Poppin’: The Ambiguous Drama of Seeing in Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 48.3 (2020). Print.
“How We Went from ‘Soup Nazis’ to Real Nazis.” New York Times. 10/7/2019. Web.
“No, My Three-Year-Old Daughter is Not a ‘Flirt.’” The Good Men Project. 9/7/2018. Web.
“From Bluto Blutarsky to Donald Trump: The United States of ‘Animal House’ at 40.” Salon. 7/28/2018. Web.
“Castaway on the Hyperobject: Getting Lost with Timothy Morton.” Journal of Popular Television 5.2 (2017): 195-209. Print.
“Lost: Une « Romance » Shakespearienne?” With Sarah Hatchuel. TV/Series Hors séries 1 (2016). Web. 15 Oct. 2016.
“Why I Identify as Mammal.” New York Times 10/25/2015. SR7. Print.
“Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Baudrillard’s Perfect Crime.” International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 10.1 (2013). Web.
“Alex Haley’s Roots and Hyperreal Historiography.” MediaScape Winter (2012). Web.
“Murder and Montage: Oliver Stone’s Hyperreal Period.” MediaScape Winter (2012). Web.
“Songs for Extinct Species: An Interview with Randy Laist.” Eco-Now. Boston University. May (2012). Web.
“Don DeLillo, Norman Mailer, Stephen King, and Lee Harvey Oswald: Notes on a Pair of Letters from the Ransom Center Archive.” The Don DeLillo Society Newsletter 6.1 (2012). Web.
“Terminating the Technopocalypse in James Cameron’s Terminator Films.” Journal of South Texas English Studies 3.2 (2012): 60-87. Web.
“Hyperreal Embryology: The ‘Alien’ films and Baudrillard’s Phases of Simulation.” The Projector 12.1 (2012): 26-57. Web.
“Welcome to the Desert of the Wheel: A Phenomenological Reading of Wheel of Fortune.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 40.1 (2012): 14-21. Print.
“Bullet-Time in Simulation City: Revisiting Baudrillard and The Matrix by Way of the ‘Real 1999.’” Alphaville 2 (2012): n. pag. Web.
“Lost in DeLillo.” The Don DeLillo Society Newsletter 4.2 (2010). Web.
“The Hyperreal Theme in 1990s American Cinema.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture 9.1 (2010). Print and Web.
“The Concept of Disappearance in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis.” Critique 51.3 (2010): 257-275. Print.
“Rappaccini’s Planet: The Legacy of Hawthorne in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, and DeLillo’s White Noise.” Ecloga 8 (2010): 66-77. Print.
“An American Dream: American Existentialism.” The Mailer Review 3.1 (2010): 61-85. Print.
“Profiles in Ontological Rebellion: The Presence of Moby-Dick in Heathers.” Leviathan 11.3 (2009): 72-78. Print.
“‘The Style of What is to Come’: Representation of the World Trade Center in the Novels of Don DeLillo.” Environment, Space, Place 1.1 (2009): 121-138. Print.
“Oedison Rex: The Art of Media Metaphor in Don DeLillo’s Americana.” Modern Language Studies 37.2 (2008): 50-63. Print.
“Dear Deleuze: YouTube, Virginia Tech, and the Reterritorialization of Media Violence.” In Short Journal Spring. (2008): n. pag. Web.
“The Canon Issue in Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo.” With Jerry R. Phillips. Academic Exchange Quarterly 12.1 (2008): 78-82. Print.
“Don DeLillo’s Only Intertextual Character: Tracing White Noise’s Murray Siskind Back to DeLillo’s Pseudonymous Novel.” The Explicator 66.2 (2008): 115-8. Print.
“Implications of The Incredible Shrinking Man Allusion in Don DeLillo’s Americana.” Notes on Contemporary Literature 37.5 (2007): 6-8. Print.
“Postmodern Transcendentalism: Sunsets in Don DeLillo’s White Noise.” CEA Magazine 18 (2007): 28-37. Print.
“Apocalyptic Nostalgia in the Prologue of Don DeLillo’s Underworld.” Forum 5.1 (2007): n. pag. Web.
“Kafka 2.0: YouTube Metamorphoses.” Journal of the Kafka Society of America 13.1 (2006): 37-42. Print.
Reviews, Reference Book Entries, Local Journalism, Educational Videos, Plays, and Poetry
“Bridgeport is a ‘Smart City’ – and is Working toward a Bright Future.” CT Mirror. 3/14/2024.
“Zaptastic.” SHHH! BREATHE SLOW! (Forthcoming).
“A Fall Love Letter to New Haven’s Beautiful Bookend Cliffs.” CT News Junkie. 10/24/2022. Web.
“The Real Jesus.” Contemporary One-Minute Plays, Vol. 2. Som (Ed.). 2022.
“Art Exhibit Emits Good Vibrations.” New Haven Independent. 4/27/2022. Web.
“Remembering, rather than Celebrating, the Pequot War.” CT News Junkie. 7/24/2020. Web.
“Homeschooling on the Fly.” The CT Mirror. 3/29/2020. Web.
Review: Pick up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music. John Corbett. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Northeast Popular American Culture blog. January 8, 2020. Web.
“Hall of Mammals, Yale Peabody Museum.” Connecticut’s Best Emerging Poets. Z Publishing. 2019. Print.
“Marianne’s Toads” and “Weird Miracle.” Connecticut’s Best Emerging Poets. Z Publishing. 2018. Print.
“Goodwin College Examines Race Relations in Connecticut since ‘Roots.’” The CT Mirror. 9/13/2017. Web.
Review: Alex Haley: And the Books that Changed a Nation. Robert J. Norrell. New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 2015. Making Roots: A Nation Captivated. Matthew F. Delmont. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Modern Language Studies 47.1 (2017). 66-69. Print.
“At Goodwin, Research Begins with Answering Questions, even after Bigfoot.” East Hartford Gazette. 4/13/2017. 5. Print.
“Analysis of Character in James Joyce’s ‘Eveline’” (video). Gyldendal Education. 2017.
“Advice to his Son, on Learning to Walk in New Haven.” Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology of Best Poems, Vol. 3. 52-53. Print.
Review: Material Ecocriticism. Ed. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014. [Inter]sections 19 (2016). Web.
Review: Better Living through Criticism: How to Think about Art, Literature, Beauty, and Truth by A. O. Scott. NY: Penguin Press, 2016. Interartive 85 (2016). Web.
“Chip Kidd” and “The Cheese Monkeys.” Encyclopedia of Contemporary Fiction. Ed., Facts on File, Inc.: New York, 2009. Print.
“The Honey Thief” by Elizabeth Graver. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Fiction. Ed., Facts on File, Inc.: New York, 2009. Print.
“Sartre’s Nausea” and “McCarthy’s The Road.” The Dictionary of Literary Characters. Ed., Facts on File, Inc.: New York, 2009. Print.
Review: Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction by Peter Boxall. NY: Routledge, 2006. The Rocky Mountain Review 62.2 (2008): 151-153. Print.
Review: Don DeLillo: Balance at the Edge of Belief by Jesse Kavadlo. NY: Peter Lang, 2004. The Rocky Mountain Review 62.1 (2008): 155-157. Print.
Review: Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo by Joseph Dewey. Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2006. The Rocky Mountain Review 61.1 (2007): 156-158. Print.