Biography
Associate Professor John Kimsey received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his BA from Washington University in St. Louis. He teaches and writes about modern literature, popular culture and intersections between the two and has also worked as a professional musician. His essays have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and anthologies, including The Space Between: Literature & Culture, 1914-1945; Popular Music & Society; Interdisciplinary Literary Studies; The Journal of Popular Music Studies; The Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community; The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles; Sgt. Pepper & the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today; Reading the Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism and the Fab Four; Fifty Years with the Beatles: The Beatles’ Impact on Contemporary Culture; “The Beatles” Through a Glass Onion: Reconsidering the White Album; and the forthcoming collection Lit-Rock: Literary Capital in Popular Music.
Supported by a DePaul Humanities fellowship, his song cycle, Twisted Roots: Music, Politics and the American Dream Blues, has been described by jazz polymath Ben Sidran as "an ingenious way to integrate political and social commentary into a musical architecture."
Dr. Kimsey received DePaul’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 2014 and again in 2020. His classes include: CCA 281 Brave New World & Nineteen Eighty-four: Diverging Dystopias; CCA 185 The Beatles and the Creative Process; CCA 286 New Orleans in Song, Story & Struggle; IN 307 Integrative Seminar: Frankenstein Across the Curriculum; AI 215 Film Noir; and LL 270 Critical Thinking.