Jesse Kavadlo is a Professor of English and Humanities and the Director of the Center for Teaching at Maryville University in St. Louis. He has a Ph.D. in English from Fordham University, writes for _PopMatters_, is the President of the Don DeLillo Society, and plays lead guitar in Top Gunz, the St. Louis-based '80s hard rock tribute band.
Books:
_Rock of Pages: The Literary Tradition of 1980s Heavy Metal_ (Bloomsbury, 2025)
_Don DeLillo In Context_ (Cambridge UP, 2022)
_American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror: Falling Skies, Dark Knights Rising, and Collapsing Cultures_ (Praeger, 2015)
_Michael Chabon's America_, with Bob Batchelor (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014)
_Don DeLillo: Balance at the Edge of Belief_ (Peter Lang, 2004)
Look for his chapters in the following books as well:
“Phones, Words, and Silences: On Performance and Performativity in DeLillo’s Narrators,” _The Edinburgh Companion to Don DeLillo and the Arts_. Ed. Catherine Gander. Edinburgh UP, 2023. 329-340
“Descent, Dissent, and Rising Out: The Narrative Arc of the Ex-Hate Group Leader,” _Hate Groups_, Contemporary World Issues series. Ed. David Newton, ABC-CLIO, 2021. 159-164
“‘Here and Gone’: Point Omega’s Extraordinary Rendition,” _Don DeLillo after the Millennium: Currents and Currencies_. Ed. Jacqueline Zubeck. Lexington, 2017.
67-81
"Paperless Papers: Errors and Expectations in the Electronic Era," _Preparing Teachers to Teach Writing Using Technology_. Eds. Kristy Pytash, Rick Ferdig, and Tim Rasinski. Pittsburgh: ETC Press, 2013. 181-193
"Chuck Palahniuk's Edible Complex," _Chuck Palahniuk_. Ed. Francisco Collado-Rodríguez, London: Continuum, 2013. 141-156
"We Have to Go Back: Lost after 9/11," _Looking for Lost: Critical Essays on the Enigmatic Series_. Ed. Randy Laist. MacFarlane, 2011. 230-242
"With Us or Against Us: Chuck Palahniuk's 9/11," _Reading Chuck Palahniuk: American Monsters and Literary Mayhem_. Eds. Cynthia Kuhn and Lance Rubin. Routledge, 2009. 103-115
"X-estential X-Men: Jews, Mutants, and the Literature of Struggle," _X-Men and Philosophy_. Eds. Rebecca Housel and J. Jeremy Wisnewski. Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series. Wiley, 2009. 38-49
"White Teacher, Black Writers, White Students: Colorblindness and Racial Consciousness in Teaching African American Literature," _Teaching Race in the Twenty-First Century: College Professors Talk About Their Fears, Risks, and Rewards_. Ed. Lisa Guerrero. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 137-150
"The Fiction of Self-destruction--Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist," _You Do Not Talk About Fight Club_. Ed. Read Schuchardt. BenBella Books, 2008. 13-33
"Fear Factor: Reality Television, the Rhetoric of Pornography, and Red State America," _PopPorn: The Proliferation of Pornography in American Culture_. Eds. Ann C. Hall and Mardia Bishop. Westport: Praeger Press, 2007: 99-110
"Tutoring Taboo: A Reconsideration of Style in the Writing Center," _Refiguring Prose Style: Possibilities for Writing Pedagogy_. Eds. Thomas Pace and T.R. Johnson, Logan: Utah State UP, 2005. 215-226
"The Aesthetics of Waste in _Underworld_," _Don DeLillo_. Bloom's Major Novelists. Ed. Harold Bloom, Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003. 142-144
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