Smith, Evans Lansing 1950-
Smith, Evans Lansing 1950-
PERSONAL:
Born August 23, 1950, in Baltimore, MD; son of Henry Evans, Jr. (a mortgage banker) and Jane Smith; married Michaela Ruppert, October 21, 1984; children: Anita, Charles, Angela. Ethnicity: "White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant." Education: Williams College, B.A., 1972; Antioch International, M.A., 1978; Claremont Graduate School, M.A., 1980, Ph.D., 1986. Hobbies and other interests: Music of the Grateful Dead, tennis.
ADDRESSES:
Office—Department of English, Midwestern State University, 3410 Taft Blvd., Wichita Falls, TX 76308. E-mail—lansing.smith@mwsu.edu.
CAREER:
Franklin College, Lugano, Switzerland, assistant professor of English, 1986-88; Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, MD, assistant professor of English, 1988-90; Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX, professor of English, 1990—. Presenter of public lectures on mythology.
MEMBER:
Modern Language Association of America, Joseph Campbell Foundation.
WRITINGS:
Rape and Revelation: The Descent to the Underworld in Modernism, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1990.
Ricorso and Revelation: An Archetypal Poetics of Modernism, Camden House (Columbia, SC), 1995.
Figuring Poesis: A Mythical Geometry of Postmodernism, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1997.
The Hero Journey in Literature: Parables of Poesis, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1997.
The Descent to the Underworld in Literature, Painting, and Film, 1895-1950: The Modernist Nekyia, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 2001.
Sacred Mysteries: Myths about Couples in Quest, Blue Dolphin Publishing (Nevada City, CA), 2003.
The Myth of the Descent to the Underworld in Postmodern Literature, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 2003.
Contributor to books, including C.G. Jung and the Humanities: Towards a Hermeneutics of Culture, edited by Karin Barnaby and Pellegrino d'Acierno, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1990. Contributor of articles and poetry to periodicals, including Mythosphere: Journal for Image, Myth, and Symbol, Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts, Journal of Modern Literature, Studies in Short Fiction, Literature/Film Quarterly, and Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.
SIDELIGHTS:
Evans Lansing Smith once told CA: "My work was inspired by meeting and traveling with Joseph Campbell in the late 1970s. We went on study tours of northern France, Egypt, and Africa, and I subsequently attended seminars in New York, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco. His work in mythology and my interest in modernist literature and culture came together in my studies of the descent to the underworld. I am currently writing more creative nonfiction, at work on a kind of historical novel tracing the lives of my ancestors. This represents a major and challenging change of direction in my work."