Carla Barger, PhD, MFA
Visiting Lecturer, PhD, 2024
Program for Writers
Contact
Building & Room:
2007 UH
Address:
601 S Morgan St.
Office Phone:
Email:
CV Link:
Related Sites:
Research and Teaching Interests
Research Interests
Lyric Theory; Spectrality; Computational and Embodied Poetics; Contemporary Hybrid Forms; Rural Poetics & Poetics of Place; Ecopoetics; Folklore; Transgenerational Trauma; Digital and Public Humanities; Wuthering Heights
Teaching Interests
Creative Writing (Poetry, Lyric Essay, Hybrid Forms); Lyric History and Theory; Ecopoetics and Environmental Literature; Poetic Praxis; Film Rhetoric; the Long 19th Century; American Romanticism; Native American Literature
About
Carla Barger is an ecolyric poet and essayist whose work primarily focuses on place and landscape, spectrality, folklore, transgenerational trauma, and ecolyricism. Her writing has appeared in several literary journals, including HeartWood Literary Magazine and Slippery Elm. She's received the David Diamond Writing Prize from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature and the Malcolm Sedam Writing Award for Poetry from Miami University.
Carla teaches poetry, creative nonfiction, composition, and literature. She is also the copyeditor for Harvard Papers in Botany and the poetry editor for Jarnal Literary Magazine.
Selected Publications
Books
Two Dead Thrushes: Elegy for Birdsong, Submitted for Review
Journals
Bloodroot, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, November 2024
Fault 1811/2011, Midway Journal, vol. 17, issue 3, July 2023
Elegy for Birdsong: Two Dead Thrushes, Lover’s Eye Press, Issue 1, September 2021
Fort Defiance, Lover’s Eye Press, September 2021
Bone Child, Lover’s Eye Press, September 2021
Ghost, HeartWood Literary Magazine, Fall 2020
Grown Wild, HeartWood Literary Magazine, Fall 2020
Roots, The Muses’ Gallery, Fall 2020/Winter 2021
Witness, MidAmerica, vol. XLVI, February 2020
Wasteland (for Antonina Tumkovsky), The Light Ekphrastic, August 2014
Missed, SPANK the CARP, July 2014
Upon My 40th Spring, Green Hills Literary Lantern, June 2014
Dear Little Me, decomP magazinE, June 2014
Octobers, Ink: Art, Poetry, and Prose, Spring 2005
Public-Facing Digital and Humanities Projects
The Endo/Exo Writers Project: Computing Class in U.S. and U.K. Novels, 1880-1940, UIC Digital Humanities Initiative, Co-Investigators: Lennard Davis (UIC), Alexander Dunst (University of Paderborn, Germany), Hannah Huber (University of the South), Carla Barger (UIC), Travis Mandell (UIC), August 2019-Present
Service to Community
AI Working Group, First-Year Writing Program, Department of English, UIC, July 2025-Present
“Reclaiming the Low-Tech Classroom: Choice Architecture and Slow Teaching as Antidotes to AI Fatigue,” UIC First-Year Writing Program Teaching Orientation, UIC, August 2025
Creative Writing Committee, Department of English, University of South Dakota, August 2024-May 2025
“Surviving Your First Year of Grad School Teaching,” UIC First-Year Writing Program Teaching Orientation, UIC, August, 2023
Writing in Depth Academic Writing Retreat, Summer 2023
Founder and Director, Digital Humanities Graduate Student Network, UIC, 2021-2022
Peer Mentor, Department of English, UIC, 2020-2024
Panelist, welcome day for newly admitted PhD and MA students, UIC, Spring 2021
Diversity & Recruitment Committee, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, 2020-2021
Digital Scholarship Committee, UIC, 2020-2021
Education
Ph D, Literature, Creative Writing, University of Illinois Chicago, 2024
MFA, Creative Writing, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2006
BA, English, Creative Writing, Miami University, 1999
Professional Memberships
Sherwood Anderson Society, Vice President, 2024-Present
American Folklore Society, 2023-Present
Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), 2020-Present
Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML), 2018-Present
Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), 2003-Present
Selected Presentations
Keynote Speaker, Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, University of South Dakota and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, Sioux Falls, SD, March 2, 2025
“‘Haunted by the Ghost of an Old Forest’: Ecospectrality in the Poetry of Wendell Berry,” American Literature Association Symposium “American Poetry,” Santa Fe, NM, November 7-9, 2024 (accepted, did not present)
Digital Humanities Panel (Moderator), Student History Conference: Perspectives in History, University of Illinois Chicago, March 9, 2024
Selected poems from the collection “Two Dead Thrushes: Elegy for Birdsong,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Annual Symposium, Michigan State University, June 1-3, 2023
Selected poems from the collection “Home / Sick,” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Annual Symposium, Michigan State University, May 16-18, 2019
“Transclass Poetry: Witness from the Liminal Space,” Writing by Degrees biannual conference, Binghamton University, SUNY, April 27, 2019
Research Currently in Progress
Books
Prairie Fires (lyric essays and poems)
Public-Facing Digital and Humanities Projects
Redacted: Suicide, Big Ag, and Ecocrisis / An Elegy for Farmers, Principal Investigator, January 2024-Present
Artistic and Professional Performances and Exhibits
Midway Journal “Midway over Michigan,” Featured Reader, Chicago, IL 2023
Lover’s Eye Press, Featured Reader, Rare Nest Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2023
Poetry Salon, City Lit Books, Featured Reader, Chicago, IL, 2021
SSML Members Reading, Featured Reader, Virtual, 2021
The Poetry Salon, Uncharted Books, Featured Reader, Chicago, IL 2019
Program for Writers Reading Series, UIC, Reader with Javier Zamora, Chicago, IL 2019
Catherine Edelman Gallery, Featured Reader, Chicago, IL 2019
Woman Made Gallery, Featured Reader, Chicago, IL 2019
The Splat Flats Lumbart, Featured Reader, Chicago, IL, 2007
Betty Rhymer Gallery, Artist’s Book, Chicago, IL, 2006