Skip Willman

Received his PhD from Indiana University (1998). Was a Brittain Fellow at Georgia Tech (1999-2001) and Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin College (2001-2) before arriving at USD.

Contemporary American Fiction, Critical Theory, Magical Realism, Postmodernism

Contemporary American Literature, Cold War Literature and Culture, Marxist Theory, Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Published essays on Don DeLillo, Stanley Elkin, Ian Fleming, Thomas Pynchon, and conspiracy theory. Co-editor, along with Edward P. Comentale and Stephen Watt, of Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of James Bond (Indiana UP, 2005). He is currently completing a project entitled Cold War Catastrophes: Western Intelligence Failures in Post-World War Two Fiction, which examines the cases of the Cambridge spies and the Bay of Pigs in the literature of Fleming, John le Carré, Robert Littell, DeLillo, Norman Mailer, and James Ellroy.

Citations listed below are presented in a standardized, modified format for display purposes only. They do not necessarily reflect the preferred style and conventions of the faculty member or discipline.

Willman, Skip. Cold War Spy Fiction: The Ethics of Fighting Fire with Fire. In The Bloomsbury Handbook to Cold War Literary Cultures, editors Greg Barnhisel, 95-112. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2022.
Willman, Skip. The Kennedy Assassination: Paranoid Suspicions. In Don DeLillo in Context, editors Jesse Kavadlo, 58-67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Willman, Skip. The Continental Abyss: John Wick vs. the Frankfurt School. In The Worlds of Wick: The Year's Work at the Continental Hotel, editors Caitlin G. Watt and Stephen Watt, 121-145. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022.
Willman, Skip. "Reframing 'official memory': Don DeLillo's 'Libra' and the House Select Committee on Assassinations", 139-68. Vol. 71, Iss. 3 Arizona Quarterly, 2015.
Willman, Skip. Spectres of Marx in Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, 198-222. Vol. 51 Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2010.
Willman, Skip. Review of Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium by Kirsten Moana Thompson, 331-3. Vol. 16, Iss. 1-2 Symploke: A Journal for the Intermingling of Literary, Cultural, and Theoretical Scholarship, 2009.
Willman, Skip. Misrecognition and the Gaze in Stanley Elkin's The Magic Kingdom. In Casebook on Stanley Elkin's The Magic Kingdom, editors David Dougherty, 19. New York: Dalkey Archive Press, 2006.
Willman, Skip, Comentale, Edward, and Watt, Stephen. Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2005.
Willman, Skip, Comentale, Edward, and Watt, Stephen . Introduction. In Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007, editors Edward Comentale, Stephen Watt, Skip Willman, xi-xxiii. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2005.
Willman, Skip. Rev. of The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming's Novels to the Big Screen by Jeremy Black, 350-2. Vol. 13, Iss. 1-2 Symploke: A Journal for the Intermingling of Literary, Cultural, and Theoretical Scholarship, 2005.
Willman, Skip. The Kennedys, Fleming, and Cuba: Bond's Foreign Policy. In Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007, 176-99. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2005.
Willman, Skip. Spinning Paranoia: The Antinomy of Conspiracy and Contingency in Postmodern Culture. In Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America. New York, NY: New York UP, 2002.
Willman, Skip. Art after Dealey Plaza: Don DeLillo's Libra, 621-40. Vol. 45, Iss. 3 Modern Fiction Studies, 1999.
Willman, Skip. Traversing the Fantasies of the JFK Assassination: Conspiracy and Contingency in DeLillo's Libra, 405-33. Vol. 39, Iss. 3 Contemporary Literature, 1998.

Willman, Skip, "The Hunger Games" and the Failure of the Utopian Imagination. Presented at the Utopia/Dystopia Symposium, Muenster University Center, USD. (February 07, 2023)
Willman, Skip, The Continental Abyss: John Wick and the Frankfurt School. Presented at the The World(s) of John Wick, Bloomington, IN. (November 07, 2019)
Willman, Skip, "Litigating Intelligence Failures: CIA Memoirs in the Covert Sphere". Presented at the PCA/ACA Annual Conference, Indianapolis, IN. (March 30, 2018)
Willman, Skip, From Frankenstein to Blade Runner. Presented at the Frankenstein 200! Symposium, Vermillion, SD. (February 27, 2018)
Willman, Skip, Cold War Catastrophes: Intelligence Failures as Historical Trauma in Post-WWII Fiction. Presented at the 2017 American Literature Association Conference, Boston, MA. (May 30, 2017)
Willman, Skip, "Cultural Binding in 'Zero Dark Thirty.'". Presented at the PCA/ACA National Conference, Seattle, WA. (March 22, 2016)
Willman, Skip, In the Wake of the Church Committee: Don DeLillo's "The Names". Presented at the The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900, Louisville, KY. (February 2016)
Willman, Skip, Rewriting Cold War Catastrophes: The Philby Case in Robert Littell's "Young Philby". Presented at the The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, Louisville, KY. (February 26, 2015)
Willman, Skip, Traversing "the frame of official memory": The House Select Committee on Assassinations and Don DeLillo's "Libra". Presented at the The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, Louisville, KY. (February 21, 2014)
Willman, Skip, Between the "Theater of Paranoia" and the "Cinema of Cynicism": The Secret History of the CIA in Mailer's "Harlot's Ghost". Presented at the The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, Louisville, KY. (February 23, 2012)
Willman, Skip, The Politics of Demythologization: The Underworld Trilogy of James Ellroy. Presented at the The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, Louisville, KY. (February 26, 2011)
Willman, Skip, "After the Fall": The Philby Case as Historical Trauma in the Fiction of John le Carre. Presented at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900, Louisville, KY. (February 19, 2010)

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