Ault, Donald D. 1942–

(Donald Duane Ault)

PERSONAL: Born October 5, 1942, in Canton, OH; son of Arthur Lewis (a machinist) and Lillian (in sales; maiden name, Morris) Ault; married Lynda Switzer, August 7, 1965; children: Lara Kristin, Jamie Alanna. Education: Kent State University, B.A., 1964, M.A., 1965; University of Chicago, Ph.D., 1968.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611. E-mail—donault@english.ufl.edu.

CAREER: Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Co., North Canton, OH, junior drafter, 1959–61; E.W. Bliss Co., Canton, assistant project engineer, 1962; General Tire and Rubber Co., Akron, OH, worked in equipment design, 1965–68; University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor of English, 1968–76, and humanities research professor; Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, associate professor of English, 1976–88; University of Florida, Gainesville, professor of English, 1988–. Guest lecturer at other institutions, including University of California Riverside, University of California, Santa Cruz, University of Texas at Austin, and University of California, Berkeley; conference organizer and participant in the United States and abroad; guest on media programs. Consultant to Smithsonian Institution.

WRITINGS:

Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1974.

(Editor, with Dan Miller and Mark Bracher, and contributor) Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument of Method, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1987.

Narrative Unbound: Re-visioning William Blake's "The Four Zoas", Station Hill Press (Barrytown, NY), 1987.

Visionary Physics and Other Essays: Blake, Newton, and Incommensurable Textuality, Station Hill Press (Barrytown, NY), 2002.

(Editor and author of introduction) Carl Barks: Conversations, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2003.

Executive producer and editorial supervisor for videotape The Duck Man: An Interview with Carl Barks, released by Bruce Hamilton Co., 1996. Contributor to essay collections, including The Carl Barks Library of Walt Disney's Donald Duck, edited by Bruce Hamilton, Another Rainbow Publishing (Scottsdale, AZ), 1983–90; Unnam'd Forms: Blake and Textuality, edited by Nelson Hilton and Thomas Vogler, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1986; Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism, edited by Laura Claridge and Elizabeth Langland, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1990; and Comics and Culture: Theoretical and Analytical Approaches to Comics, Museum Tusculanums Fordag, University of Copenhagen (Copenhagen, Denmark), 2000. Contributor of articles and reviews to scholarly journals and other periodicals, including Studies in Romanticism, Wordsworth Circle, Comics Journal, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Keats-Shelley Journal, and Modern Philology. Former associate editor, Blake Newsletter.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Disney Ducks in Perspective: The Comic Vision of Carl Barks, for University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS); The Urizen Equations, Station Hill Press (Barrytown, NY); Holograph(em)ic Singularities: Romanticism, Popular Culture, and Mathematical Notation, Station Hill Press (Barrytown, NY).

SIDELIGHTS: Donald D. Ault once told CA that his background in engineering and literature was a primary motivation for his first book, and that his writing on popular culture evolved from a life-long hobby of collecting comics. Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton was described by a Choice contributor as "an important and very likely a lasting contribution to Blake scholarship, to 19th century epistemology, and to intellectual history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2002, Gordon Flagg, review of Carl Barks: Conversations, p. 717.

Choice, July-August, 1975, review of Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton.

Clio, fall, 1991, Stephen L. Carr, review of Narrative Unbound: Re-visioning William Blake's "The Four Zoas," p. 89.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, January, 1989, Brian Wilkie, review of Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument of Method, p. 106; October, 1992, Mary Lynn Johnson, review of Narrative Unbound, p. 568.

Studies in Romanticism, fall, 1991, David Wagenknecht, review of Narrative Unbound, p. 523.

Times Literary Supplement, June 20, 1975, review of

Visionary Physics. Virginia Quarterly Review, spring, 1988, review of Critical Paths, p. 52.

Yale Review, winter, 1975, review of Visionary Physics.

ONLINE

University of Florida Web site: Donald D. Ault Home Page, http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/223C;donault/ (April 6, 2006).