Thursday, January 2, 2014

In Memoriam—Dr. Dennis Lensing

The English Department was disheartened to learn the news that Dr. Dennis Lensing, a doctoral alum, passed away on Sunday, December 29, 2013, in Lexington, Kentucky. He was 42. Dr. Lensing earned his PhD in Spring 2007 and taught for a while at the University of Wisconsin—Oshkosh.

After completing his PhD exams with distinction in the areas of the novel as a genre; literary theory and criticism; and eighteenth-century British literature, Dr. Lensing wrote a dissertation titled, “Utopian Myopia: American Consumerism, The Cold War, and the Popular Fiction of the Long 1950s.” Rooted firmly in Marxist theory, the dissertation examined modern American culture and its popular fiction during the rise of consumer capitalism after World War II, beginning with post-WWII paperbacks, “adman” and “business” novels and concluding with 1950s science fiction. Dr. Lensing maintained that popular novels worked as a significant cultural form that brought together the era’s uneven anxieties about affluence, isolationism, exploration, freedom, and Communism after the Second World War. Dr. Jesse Alemán chaired the dissertation, which also included Drs. Tony Marquez, Elizabeth Archuleta, and M.K. Booker (U of Arkansas) on the committee.

Services will be held on Saturday, January 4, 2014, in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and memorials may be made to Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (www.kyorgandonor.org), Attn: Director of Administration Services, 106 E. Broadway, Louisville, KY 40202.

http://www.northlittlerockfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Dennis-Lensing/#!/Obituary

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