Jennifer Besemer

Literature, First Year Writing

Jen Besemer earned her MA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and joined the English Department in Fall 2005.  Jen most frequently teaches Writing and Rhetoric II because it allows her to indulge her passion as a “research geek,” but she also enjoys teaching Introduction to Poetry and Writing and Rhetoric I.  She currently serves on the First-Year Writing Committee. 

In addition to being a committed educator, Jen is a poet, critic, fiction writer, translator and visual artist.  She has published four chapbooks of poetry (What Is Born, The Year of Wood, Last Sun and Wrongheadedness), and her original poems and translations have been published most recently in Bridge, milk, and Sulphur River Literary Review.  Her critical essays frequently appear in Rain Taxi Review of Books, and her most recent fiction publication was with Chicago’s online Ignavia Press.  Her co-translation of Michael Löwy’s book Morning Star:  The New Myth from Romanticism to Surrealism is forthcoming from University of Texas Press in 2009. 

Jen’s research interests include the writings of Tristan Tzara; intertextuality, identity and subversion in Harry Potter; transgression and power in gender and language; and alternative poetics.

Office Location: English Department, suite 514, 5th floor, 33 E. Congress

Office Phone: 312-344-8125

FAX: 312-344-8001

Email: jbesemer@colum.edu

Mailing Address:
Jen Besemer
Department of English
Columbia College of Chicago
600 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605