Jesse Kavadlo, Ph.D.

About

Professor, writer, and performer Jesse Kavadlo received his Ph.D. from Fordham University. He is a Professor of English and Humanities at Maryville University of St. Louis, where he is also the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and Coordinator of CORE 101: Discovering Community.

He teaches classes in American literature as well as courses like Aliens to Zombies: Monsters in Literature and Film, Reading Rock & Roll, and Superheroes in American Culture.

His areas of expertise include literature, particularly the works of authors such as Don DeLillo, Michael Chabon, and Chuck Palahniuk; music, especially 1980s rock and heavy metal; pop culture, including superhero comics and films from the 1970s-1990s; and teaching in higher education.

Jesse’s articles and chapters have appeared in journals such as Studies in 20th Century Literature, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Studies in Popular Culture, Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, and more.

He has published chapters in these books, and more: The Edinburgh Companion to Don DeLillo and the Arts, Preparing Teachers to Teach Writing Using Technology, Chuck Palahniuk, Reading Chuck Palahniuk: American Monsters and Literary Mayhem, X-Men and Philosophy, and Don DeLillo (Bloom’s Major Novelists).

He was the keynote speaker for the Midwest Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference and the Missouri Modern Languages and Modern Technologies Conference, and he has presented at many national conferences, including Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture, the Lilly Conference: Evidence-based Teaching and Learning, American Literature Association conference, the SITE (Society for Information Technology) conference, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the College English Association Conference, the International Conference on Narrative, and more.

Jesse Kavadlo speaking at an event — Jesse Kavadlo teaching at Maryville University.

Jesse Kavadlo performing the solo from Wanted Dead or Alive with Top Gunz.

Band

Top Gunz performing live — Top Gunz: St. Louis 80s Party Rock Experience

Dr. NoiZe on guitar — Performing as Dr. NoiZe

Jesse is also the lead guitarist in Top Gunz: The St. Louis ‘80’s Party Rock Experience, performing under the name Dr. NoiZe. Top Gunz brings the look, sound, and attitude of an ‘80’s arena concert wherever they go, playing the mega-hits of Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Poison, and many more.

Top Gunz site Top Gunz on Facebook

Books

Rock of Pages: The Literary Tradition of 1980s Heavy Metal

Rock of Pages offers a literary reading of 1980s heavy metal, using forty years of hindsight and analytical methods usually tied to literature. Drawing on his background as both professor and musician, Jesse Kavadlo places the genre within its cultural contexts, including the Cold War, MTV, and the PMRC hearings. Using the PMRC’s own categories, the book examines metal’s treatment of violence and justice, addiction and madness, sex and relationships, and the occult along with questions of morality. It argues that 1980s heavy metal showed more artistry than many assumed and that literature shares the same spirit of rebellion.

Bloomsbury Amazon

Don DeLillo in Context

Don DeLillo is one of the most important novelists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Yet despite DeLillo's prolific output and scholarly recognition, much of the attention has gone to his works individually, rather than collectively or thematically. This volume provides separate entries into the wide variety and categories of contexts that surround and help illuminate DeLillo's writings. Don DeLillo in Context examines how geography, biography, history, media studies, culture, philosophy, and the writing process provide critical frameworks and ways of reading and understanding DeLillo's prodigious body of work.

Cambridge Amazon

American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror

American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror argues that twenty first century fiction, film, and television have been shaped by narratives driven by anxiety and a strange sense of wish fulfillment tied to collapsing morality, family, law, and storytelling. From aging superheroes and young adult dystopias to anti heroes and revived vampires and zombies, popular genres return repeatedly to the imagery of terror. Kavadlo’s study shows that many novels and films responding to September eleven explore far more than terrorism, while works that seem unrelated are still deeply connected to it. By examining post September eleven New York novels, television anti heroes, and the resurgence of the undead across media, the book outlines an Era of Terror that reflects the cultural impact of that event. It is written for students and scholars of popular culture and brings together multiple topics to reach a broad audience.

Bloomsbury Amazon

Michael Chabon’s America: Magical Words, Secret Worlds, and Sacred Spaces

Michael Chabon is a major voice in contemporary American fiction, known for exploring late twentieth and early twenty first century life in works such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, Telegraph Avenue, and the Pulitzer winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Writing across novels, young adult fiction, essays, and screenplays, he follows the tradition of past stylists, yet his work has not received sustained critical attention. Michael Chabon’s America is the first scholarly collection devoted to his writing, showing how he uses genres such as detective and comic book fiction to frame the American experience. The essays examine his full body of work and place it within cultural, historical, and stylistic contexts, offering a comprehensive study of an author whose influence merits closer analysis.

Bloomsbury Amazon

Don DeLillo: Balance at the Edge of Belief

Don DeLillo, recipient of major awards including the National Book Award, the William Dean Howells Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize, is a central novelist of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Though often read as a prescient and postmodern voice of millennial culture, this book argues that his novels White Noise, Libra, Mao II, Underworld, and The Body Artist focus more directly on spiritual crisis. Filled with doubt, estrangement, and longing, these works still offer a moral counterpoint to the troubled worlds they depict. In the language of contemporary America, DeLillo uses these stories to explore the deeper questions of what it means to be human.

Peter Lang Amazon