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Joseph E. Becker
Elen síla lumenn' omentielvo / A star shines on the hour of our meeting
(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Ch. 3) |
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 Geraldine Cannon Becker |
Joseph E. Becker was born in southeastern Iowa and grew up in upstate South Carolina. His ancestory is German, Scottish, and English. An inquisitive nature along with vision problems contributed to his early enthusiasm for reading, and he became a frequent visitor at his school and public libraries. He enjoyed fantasy & science fiction novels—especially "epic fantasy" (e.g., J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen R. Donaldson, David Eddings, Terry Brooks, et al.). He also enjoyed the wilderness and camping from an early age thanks to his enrollment in the Boy Scouts in which he spent many years and attained the rank of Eagle Scout.
While he initially considered pursuing a degree in European History in college, he eventually decided to major in English Language and Literature at Winthrop University where he earned Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in English Literature concentrating on English Romanticism. He also met his future wife, Geraldine Cannon, who came from the mountains of northwestern South Carolina. After completing his Master's degree at Winthrop, he taught at a couple of community colleges in North and South Carolina during the early 1990s. He also began reading works by Joseph Campbell and developed an interest in comparative mythology and religion.
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In 1994, his wife was accepted into the Master of Fine Arts program in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and they moved to Arkansas that summer. He became interested in the thought and works of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung after his wife took a course in the Jungian literary analysis of fairy tales and introduced him to Jungian literature and the director of the Comparative Literature program at the University of Arkansas, the late John R. Locke. In 1996, he began work on a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature specializing in English, French, and German Romanticism in his doctoral dissertation entitled Embracing the Shadow: Archetypal Dynamics in the Romantic Age. Along with his academic work, he also held a graduate teaching assistantship in Composition and World Literature. He was granted a Master of Arts en passant in Comparative Literature in 1999 and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in 2002. After completing his Ph.D., he spent a year teaching at a community college in Virginia before accepting a position in English at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, one of the seven campuses of the University of Maine system, and one Maine's best small public universities (cited four consecutive years (2005-2009) as a "Best College in the Northeast" by The Princeton Review). He was awarded tenure by the UMS Board of Trustees in 2009.
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The Beckers at UMFK's 4th Annual Shakespeare's Birthday Celebration, April 2007
Photo: Deborah Hitchcock |
Fort Kent is the northern terminus of historic US Highway 1 (the southern terminus is in Key West, Florida) and features a population largely descended from Acadians who settled in the region after the Grand Dérangement of 1755 when French-speaking residents of Nova Scotia were forcefully deported. Regional dialects of French (commonly termed "Valley French") are the first language for many individuals living in the area and bilingual speakers are quite common.
Fort Kent sits at the confluence of the Fish River and St. John River (which forms the border between the US & Canada), links to the Village of Clair, New Brunswick via the International Bridge, and is surrounded by the North Maine Woods, a vast tract of forest that is remote, sparsely populated, and mostly owned by several timber companies. The North Maine Woods is part of the Great North Woods which spreads across New Hampshire, Vermont, upstate New York, and portions of the Canadian Province of Québec. There are four distinct seasons, though winters are generally long, cold, and snowy while summers are pleasant and mild (save for the short, but notorious "black fly season" of mid-June to early July). The Upper Saint John Valley is the home of abundant wildlife such as moose, Canadian lynx, and Black Bear and features plentiful flora such as white pine, balsam fir, various varieties of spruce, and the endangered Furbish's lousewort (Pedicularis furbishiae).
Since earning his doctorate, he has published a number of scholarly articles and a chapter in the book Consequentiality, Vol. I: Human, All Too Human, and he has presented papers at academic conferences in the U.S. and Canada. He is currently preparing a book manuscript based on his dissertation for Peter Lang Publishing, an international academic publishing company. At UMFK, he often teaches courses on British literature, World Literature, and Comparative Mythology. Besides his professional duties, he enjoys music, especially Baroque. He also studies works on alchemy, Eastern Philosophy, and Gnosticism and works dealing with comparative religion and mythology. When not involved in teaching or research, he and his wife (who teaches English and Creative Writing at UMFK) enjoy spending time at their home with their two daughters.
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Call the world if you Please "The vale of Soul-making". Then you will find out the use of the world ...
—John Keats, Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, early 1819
“The creation of a thousand forests lies in a single acorn”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
This webpage was last updated
Thursday, November 19, 2009 8:26 PM
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Frank Herbert
(1920-1986)
Science Fiction novelist
Dune series
Photo: Variety, Coming Soon
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