Michael Martin Shea

Assistant Professor of English

Education

PhD, University of Pennsylvania
MFA, University of Mississippi
BA, Florida State University

Office: Griffin 253
Email: michael.shea@louisiana.edu
Pronouns: he/him

Teaching and Research Areas:

Poetry and poetics, hemispheric American literature, 20th century literature, critical theory, translation studies, comparative literary studies

Noteworthy:

Michael Martin Shea is a poet, translator, and scholar. His research centers on the relationship between hemispheric American poetry and the economic and material histories of the 20th and 21st centuries. He is currently working on a monograph entitled “Neoliberal Visions: Poetry, Mysticism, and Crisis in the Americas,” which examines the figure of the visionary poet across the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean. His scholarly writing has appeared in a special issue of Cultural Dynamics on “Neoliberalism in the Americas.” He is currently co-editing a special issue of College Literature on “Infrastructural Poetics,” slated to appear in 2026. Brief essays and reviews have appeared in ASAP/J, Colorado Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere.

He is the author of multiple chapbooks of poetry, including most recently To Hell With Good Intentions (Beautiful Days Press, 2024) and I’m Sorry But None of This Is My Fault (Essay Press, 2024). He is also the translator of the Argentine poet Liliana Ponce’s Theory of the Voice and Dream (World Poetry Books, 2025). His poems and translations have appeared in Chicago Review, Cincinnati Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Guernica, New England Review, POETRY, and elsewhere. He has also served on the core editorial team for the Best American Experimental Writing anthology series, published by Wesleyan University Press.