Scholarly Work on Annie Dillard

(I have stopped keeping track except sporadically--MUCH is missing)

Scheick, William J. "Annie Dillard--Narrative Fringe" (Chapter 3) in Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies, pp. 50-67. Ed. Catherine Rainwater and William J. Scheick. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.

Reimer, Margaret Loewen, "The Dialectical Vision of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 24, 1983.

Gaskins, Jacob C. "'Julie Norwich' and Julian of Norwich: Notes and a Query." Fourteenth Century English Mystics Newsletter, 1980.

Keller, Joseph. "The Function of Paradox in Mystical Discourse." Studia Mystica 6, Fall, 1893.

Owens, Virginia Stem. "Truth through Testimony: The Fierce Voice of Annie Dillard." Reformed Journal 33 (April, 1983).

Ronda, Bruce A. "Annie Dillard and the Fire of God."Christian Century 100 (1983).

Ronda, Bruce A. "Annie Dillard's Fictions to Live By,"Christian Century 101 (1984).

Lavery, David. [Review essay, Living by Fiction, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Encounters with Chinese Writers.]?Religion and Literature 17 (Summer, 1985): 61-68.

McConahay, Mary Davidson. "Into the Bladelike Arms of God: The Quest for Meaning Through Symbolic Language in Thoreau and Annie Dillard." Denver Quarterly 20 (Fall, 1985), 103-116.

Peterson, Eugene H. "Annie Dillard: Praying With Her Eyes Open." TSF Bulletin January/February 1985: 7-11.

Peterson, Eugene H. "Annie Dillard: With Her Eyes Open."Theology Today (July, 1986): 178-191.

Zeiger, William. "The Exploratory Essay: Enfranchising the Spirit of Inquiry in College Composition." College English 47 (September, 1985): 454-466.

Elder, John. Imagining the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Chapter 7: "Structures of Evolving Consciousness" (Peter Matthiessen and Annie Dillard), 161-184.

Werge, Thomas. "Mixed Metaphors in a Brave New World: American Writers and Nature." Notre Dame Magazine, Spring, 1986.

McIlroy, Gary. "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the Social Legacy of Walden." South Atlantic Quarterly Vol. 85, No. 2 (Spring, 1986).

McIlroy, Gary. "The Sparer Climate for Which I Longed: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the Spiritual Imperatives of Fall." The Thoreau Quarterly, Vol. 16, Nos. 3 & 4 (Summer, Fall, 1986).

Robbins, Lois B. "Annie Dillard: Twentieth Century Anchorite." Unpublished Master's thesis, Mundelein College.

Premer, Julie Parmenter. "A Bibliography of Writings By and About Annie Dillard for the Years 1968-1985." Unpublished Master's thesis, University of Missouri, 1986.

Aton, James. Unpublished doctoral dissertation.

Hamer, Mike. Unpublished master's thesis.

Chenetier, Marc. "Intertext Intersects Intersex: 'Tinkering Extravagance': Herman Melville, Henry Thoreau, Annie Dillard." English Department Lecture Series, University of Virginia, April 2, 1987.

McIlroy, Gary. "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the Burden of Science," American Literature Vol. 59, No. 1 (March 1987)

John E. Becker, "Science and the Sacred, from Walden to Tinker Creek," Thought Vol. 62, (December, 1987).

Marc Chenetier, Au-dela du soupcon: La Nouvelle Fiction Americaine de 1960 a nos jours. Seuil: Paris, 1989 (eleven citations).

Detweiler, Robert. Breaking the Fall: Religious Readings of Contemporary Fiction (Harper & Row, 1989)

Helmut Schreier, "Sternstunden der Sach-Ehfahrung: Adolph Portmann, Annie Dillard, and Elias Canetti," Grundschule, Marz, 1990. (Frankfurt)

Johnson, Sandra Humble. "An American Childhood" (long review essay), Mid-American Review Vol. VIII, No. 2.

Ryan, Kay. "Flying," (long review essay), Threepenny Review (Summer, 1988).

Robert Paul Dunn. "The Artist as Nun: Theme, Tone and Vision in The Writings of Annie Dillard," (printed somewhere, as I have an offprint, but it doesn't say where).

Chenetier, Marc. "Les Femmes Ecrivains aux Etas-Unis," Revue Francaise d'Etudes Americaines, November, 1986.

Carrol, Jill. "An Invitation from Silence: Annie Dillard's use of the Mystical Concepts of Via Positiva and Via Negativa." Delivered at Midwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Concordia College, 1988.

Hawkins, Peter, Yale Divinity School. "Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Midstream," The Christian Century?Vol. 106, No. 19 (June 7-14, 1989).

Fritzell, Peter A. "Composition and Decomposition at Tinker Creek," one of three parts of Nature Writing and America: Essays on a Cultural Type. Iowa State University Press, 1990.

Chenetier, Marc. "The Beagle sails again: Darwinism revisited in contemporary American fiction," a paper presented at the bi-annual conference of the European Association for American Studies in London, 1990. (Pages 19-25, the last six pages, are on "An Expedition to the Pole," an essay.)

Felch, Susan M. "Annie Dillard: Modern Physics in a Contemporary Mystic." Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature Spring, 1989; 22 (2): 1-14.

Messer, Richard. "The Spiritual Quest in Two Works by Annie Dillard," in Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 9.3,4 (1988): 321-330.

Eugene H. Pattison, "The Great Lakes Childhood: The Experience of William Dean Howells and Annie Dillard," The Old Northwest (Miami Univ., Ohio) Vol 14, No. 4 (Winter 89- 90). pp 311-329.

Ihab Hassan, Selves at Risk: Patterns of Quest in Contemporary American Letters (University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), chapter 5, "Faces of Quest: Fact."

Barbara Currier Bell, "Entering Nature," a series of 4 talks in Connecticut libraries--D., Edward Abbey, Lewis Thomas, Barry Lopez

Pascale-Laurence Poulain, Memoire de Maitrise: Figures of Repetition in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. University of Tours, unpublished master's thesis, 1991, 130pp.

Clark, Suzanne, Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the Word. Bloomington, 1991.

Clark, Suzanne, "The Woman in Nature and the Subject of Nonfiction," chapter 6, pp. 107-124 of Chris Anderson, Literary Nonfiction: Theory, Criticism, Pedagogy. Southern Illinois University Press, 1989

Goldman, Stan, "Sacrifices to the Hidden God: Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Leviticus," Soundings, (Spring/Summer 1991).

Ross-Bryant, Lynn. "The Silence of Nature." Religion and Literature, 1990.

Chenetier, Marc. "Tinkering, Extravagance: Thoreau, Melville, and Annie Dillard." Critique, 1990.

Slanger, George. "Going at your Life with a Broadax: An Open Letter to Annie Dillard," Maryland English Journal, 1989.

Cheney, Jim. "The Waters of Separation: Myth and Ritual in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Spring, 1990)

Davis, William Paul. "The 'Lords' and 'Witnesses' of Creation: Mythologizing and Demythologizing Nature in American Literature." Dissertation, 1990.

Anderson, Br. Jude, O.S.B. "The Artistic Insight as an Experience with the God in the Writings of Annie Dillard." Unpublished master's thesis.

Chenetier, Marc. "The Beagle Sails Again: Darwinism Revisited in Contemporary American Fiction" Victorianism in the United States, Amsterdam, 1992. Also presented as a paper at the Association for American Studies in London, 1990. (The last 6 pages are on "An Expedition to the Pole," an essay.)

Terri Brown-Davidson, "Choosing the Given with a Fierce and Pointed Will": Annie Dillard and Risk-Taking in Contemporary Literature." The Hollins Critic, April, 1993

Anhorn, Judy Schaaf. "Lines of Sight: Annie Dillard's Purified Nonfiction Narration." Cross-Cultural Studies: American, Canadian, and European Literature: 1945-1985. Ed. Mirko Jurak. Ljubljana: Filozofska Fakulteta, 1988. (Yugoslavia)

Hesse, Douglas, "A Boundary-Zone: First-Person Short Stories and Narrative Essays." Eds. Susan Lohafer and Jo Ellyn Clarey. Short Story Theory?at a Crossroads. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP. 1989. 85-105.

Matiko, Beverly. Fictionalizing the Audience in Literary Nonfiction: A Study of the Essays of Annie Dillard and Lewis Thomas. Diss. Edmonton, University of Alberta. Fall, 1991.

Balzer, Cam (Mr.). "Annie Dillard's Aesthetic of Sojourning." Master's thesis (unusually good), University of Alberta, 1993.

Masten, Laurie Senteney, unpublished master's thesis on Holy the Firm, Yale Divinity School.

Slovic, Scott. Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing: Henry Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 1992.

O'Neill, Samuel, "The Mystic Way in Two Works by Annie Dillard." Master's thesis, Georgetown University, 1993

Bischoff, Joan. "Fellow Rebels: Annie Dillard and Maxine Hong Kingston." The English Journal? (Urbana, IL). 1989 Dec; 78 (8):62-67.

Albin, C.D. "A Ray of Relation: Transcendental Echoes in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas. Oct, 1992; 23:17- 31.

Albin, C.D., "What the Living Know in Bellingham Bay," Christian Century, Oct 7, 1992

McClintock, Nature's Kindred Spirits: Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder. University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

Werkenthin, Karen. "Following the Paths of Thoreau and Dillard."?English Journal, October, 1992.

Barlow, Connie. Evolution Extended: Biological Debates on the Meaning of Life. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1994. (2 poems.)

Barlow, Connie. "Songs That Science Gives Us." Anima, Vol 20, No. 2 (Spring, 1994). (2 poems.)

Krasner, James. The Entangled Eye: Visual perception and the Representation of Nature in Post-Darwinian Narrative. Oxford UP, 1992.

Tracy, Sharon. "Narrative Collage in Three Works by Annie Dillard." Master's thesis, Univ. of Minnesota

Webb, Stephen H. "Nature's Spendthrift Economy: The Extravagance of God in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." Soundings, vol LXXVII, #3-4, (Fall/Winter, 1994

Detweiler, Robert. Breaking the Fall: Religious Readings of Contemporary Fiction (Harper & Row, 1989)

Jones, Nancy Badgley. "Annie Dillard''s Childhood Reading," unpublished master's thesis, 1994, University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

Poulain, Pascale. "Between Style and Voice: Annie Dillard's Hermeneutic Oscillations." G.R.A.A.T No. 12, University of Tours, 1994

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination. Harvard, 1995. 30 citations and a separate treatment.

Mendelson, Donna. "Tinker Creek and the Waters of Walden: Thoreauvian Currents in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim." The Concord Saunterer, Fall, 1995.

Smith, Pamela A., "The Ecotheology of Annie Dillard: A Study in Ambivalence". Crosscurrents, Fall 1995.

Balzer, Cam (Mr.). "Dispatches from the Ontological Frontiers Annie Dillard's Magic Realist Essay." Festival of Faith and Writing, Calvin College, 1996

Carroll, B. Jill. "The Savage Side: Reclaiming Violent Models of God," unpublished dissertation, Rice University.

Scheper, Dianne Ganz. "Dillard's Wild Wonder: a 'Gift from the Hasidim." Festival of Faith and Writing, Calvin College, 1996

Ralston, Patricia. "Annie Dillard: Praise in Paradox." Festival of Faith and Writing, Calvin College, 1996

Pattison, Eugene. "Strangers and Sojourners Toward Home: Terror and Hope in Life and Death." Festival of Faith and Writing, Calvin College, 1996

Stephenson, Will and Mimosa. "Annie Dillard's 'Aces and Eights': Variations on a Theme by E.B. White." Festival of Faith and Writing, Calvin College, 1996

Stephenson, Will. "God, Annie Dillard, and Environmental Writing." Faith and Writing, Calvin College, 1996

Pattison, Eugene H. "God and Humanity at Continent's Western Edge: Robinson Jeffers and Annie Dillard." Alma College, Alma, Michigan, 1995

Wagge, Frederick G. "Alter and Dillard: The Appalachian Universe" (source unknown.)

The New Religious Humanists: A Reader, by Gregory Wolfe, The Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 1997. (first chapter from Holy the Firm)

Schlosser, Stephen, S.J., "Faces Burning in Annie Dillard and Georges Rouault: Irony, Hope, and 20th-century Catholic Imagination" (dept of History, Stanford); paper given at Chreighton University Nov 10, 97 annual public lecture

Elliott, Sandra Stahlman, "The Mysticism of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" http://www.well.com/user/elliott/smse_dillard.html

Park von Wust, Sommerschule Wust, Landkreis Sendal, Germany. July 23, "Annie Dillard als Beobachterin der Natur." Vortrag mit einer Lesung aus Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Barbara Gordon of Arizona State Univ, paper delivered summer 98

Bayerische Akademie der Schonen Kunste, Barbara von Wulfen and Richard Exner, "Excurse zur Aufmerkamseit Annie Dillard: American Naturalist." 2 April, 98

Smith, Pamela A., "The Ecotheology of Annie Dillard: A Study in Ambivalence". Crosscurrents, Fall 1995. (Forget eco-anything)

Albanese, Catherine, Nature Religion in America 1998

Hanegraaff, Wouter J. (Dutch, publishes in English), Reflections on New Age and the Secularisation of Nature, Edinburgh Univ Press and SUNY Press 1998

Wulffen, Barbara, "Erhohte Aufmerksamkeit: Uber die Gesichten und Ansichten der Annie Dillard," in Scheidewege: Jahres- schrift fur skeptisches Denken, Sonderdruck, Jahrgang 28, 1998/99

Haas, David, "A Synthesis of Experience: Elements of Irenaean Theodicy in Two Works by Annie Dillard." M.A. thesis, Georgetown University, 1998. This is really good.

Gordon, Barbara, a paper delivered somewhere and printed

Kesegich, Amy, "Pilgrim in Progress: The Works of Annie Dillard as Spiritual Autobiography," dissertation, Case Western Reserve

Papa, James A., Jr., "Water-Signs: Place and Metaphor in Dillard and Thoreau" in Thoreau's Sense of Place, ed. Richard J. Schneider, Univ. of Iowa Press, 2000

Chirban, Sharon. "Expanding the Psychoanalytic Air We Breathe: A Study of Oneness through the Eyes of Rilke and Dillard," (Unknown) American Psychoanalytic Conference 2001

Code, Murray, "Interpreting `The Raw Universe': Meaning and Metaphysical Imaginaries," Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society, Fall, 1999, Vol XXXV, No.4

Feldman, Susan, "If I Could Tell You," review essay, Northwest Review, Vol 39, No. 1, January, 2001.

Wolfe, Gregory, Stalking the Spirit, (about Dillard and Hopkins), commencement address Seattle Pacific University MFA, Aug 7, 2010 and adapted and reprinted?as editorial statement in Image, No. 67, p. 3 ff, Fall, 2010

Spring, 2016 - The Atlantic, Harper's, Poets & Writers, Image, and other places ran long review essays of much of the work.

Dedicated Books

Smith, Linda L. Annie Dillard (Twayne U.S. Authors Series), N.Y., 1991.

Johnson, Sandra Humble. The Space Between: Literary Epiphany in the Work of Annie Dillard. Kent State University Press, 1992. (Book, formerly dissertation.)

Parrish, Nancy. Lee Smith, Annie Dillard and the Hollins Group, LSU Press, spring 98


There are many more, and more recent, books and papers and theses; I lost track. See the list that Yale's Beinecke Library has under my name.