Bob Gibney
Dr. Bob Gibney is a faculty member of the English Department at Phoenix College, 1 of 10 colleges in the Maricopa County Community College District. His areas of teaching expertise include writing and rhetoric studies, literature of the Southwest, Chicano literature, Nature Writing, literature of the Harlem Renaissance, Medieval literature, Greek mythology, and Native American literature. His teaching career spans 25 years and began when he was a graduate student at Northern Arizona University, where he earned his Master’s Degree (2002), and it continued at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he earned his Ph.D (2007). In his 13 years at Phoenix College, he has served as a leader of various student support efforts, and Dr. Gibney frequently develops and leads professional development opportunities for fellow colleagues. He has also worked as a volunteer desert educator, teaching children about their home in the Sonoran Desert.
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Literary And Natural History Of The Sonoran Desert
“Venom, Thorns, and Drought: The Sonoran Desert as You Should Learn to See It”
In this talk, Dr. Gibney shows how love of literature can blossom into a deeper and more meaningful relationship with one’s place and even with the non-human life that also calls it home. Combining his decades of experience studying, exploring, and living in and with the Sonoran Desert together with his scholarly interest and expertise in the literary history of the Southwest, this talk shows audiences how to see the realities of our desert home in new ways. Through the words of authors like Edward Abbey, Leslie Marmon Silko, Charles Bowden, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Mary Austin, Dr. Gibney shares insights that seek to inspire more educated perspectives and curiosity to learn more about one’s home.
Literary Ecology And The Comedy Of Survival
“There are no Heroes in Nature: Comedy, Tragedy, and our Place in Creation”
In this talk, Dr. Gibney blends literary studies and ecology to reveal the ways that the tragic mode–invented by the Greek tragedians–influences our lives, pulling us farther away from what we know is real about this world. He gives audiences tools to read echoes of classical tragedy in our culture, to build an expanded understanding of comedy, and to examine how the tragic and the comic play out in the cycle of non-human life, where the only rule is “the game must go on.”
Lifelong Learning Through Literary Study
“The Road Not Taken’ is Long Gone: How to Read Poems Like a Pro”
In this talk, Dr. Gibney leads audiences through the fundamentals of literary study, helping to develop and reignite skills that are too often assumed to be relevant only for the classroom. Literature and literary study is for EVERYBODY, and through a close analysis and consideration of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” this talk will inspire audiences to read more literature and to read with greater knowledge and openness to the possibilities that emerge from skilled interpretation.