Knapp, John V. 1940-

PERSONAL:

Born May 3, 1940, in Syracuse, NY; son of Victor (in sales) and Anna (a homemaker) Knapp; married Kathleen Shenton, January 19, 1963 (marriage ended May 14, 1969); married Joan I. Schwarz (an attorney), August 14, 1977; children: Margaret A., Lara M. Knapp Cantuti, Joanna Knapp Haskin, Jennifer Joy Knapp Schmeiser. Ethnicity: "Italian-Polish." Education: State University of New York College at Cortland, B.S., 1963, M.S., 1966; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ph.D. (English), 1971; attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, c. 1977; University of Wisconsin—Madison, Ph.D. (educational psychology), 2000. Hobbies and other interests: Sports, music, theater, film.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Madison, WI. Office—Department of English, 330 Reavis Hall, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115. E-mail—b0jvk1@corn.cso.niu.edu.

CAREER:

Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, professor of English, 1971—, including lectureships at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, and Oriel College, Oxford, and coordinator of teacher education in English, 1982-88. Conference director.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association of America, National Council of Teachers of English, American Psychological Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1977.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Literary Character, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1993.

Striking at the Joints: Contemporary Psychology and Literary Criticism, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1996.

(Editor, with Kenneth Womack, and contributor) Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy and Literary Study, University of Delaware Press (Cranbury, NJ), 2003.

Also author of "Red-Eye Milton and the Loom of Learning." Contributor of more than fifty articles and reviews to periodicals, including College English, College Literature, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, English Journal, Modern Fiction Studies, MLA Newsletter, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Futurist. Style, associate editor, 1985-91, coeditor, 1989-91, guest editor, 1990, 1997; member of editorial board, Style, PMLA, and Mosaic; reader for College Literature.

SIDELIGHTS:

John V. Knapp told CA: "In 1996, the University Press of America published my book Striking at the Joints: Contemporary Psychology and Literary Criticism, the culmination of twenty years of interdisciplinary research. This book details an interdisciplinary approach to several selected works of modern British and American literature from the perspective of contemporary cognitive, developmental- clinical, and personality psychology. Another book, Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy and Literary Study, includes family systems-oriented essays on Shakespeare, Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Brontë, E.M. Forster, and many other British, North American, and South American writers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

College Literature, summer, 2005, Jeffrey Adams, review of Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy and Literary Study, p. 196.

Style, spring, 1997, Paisley Livingston, review of Striking at the Joints: Contemporary Psychology and Literary Criticism, p. 199.