Sean Cashbaugh
Teaching Assistant Professor
School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Education
- PhD (2016) University of Texas at Austin (American Studies)
- MA (2010) University of Texas at Austin (American Studies)
- BA (2008) The College of William and Mary (English)
Research
I am an interdisciplinary scholar of American Studies and Cultural Studies. My areas of expertise include American literary and cultural history, cultures of American radicalism, political aesthetics, cultural theory, science fiction, underground culture, and composition pedagogy.
My scholarship revolves around two broad questions. First, how have individuals and collectives of the twentieth century theorized and creatively realized radical political projects in their own languages and forms ? This question animates an ongoing book project tentatively titled Underground Culture: Excavating the History of an Alternative, which explores the history of the idea of “underground culture” in the American twentieth century, rooting it in postwar debates about politics, aesthetics, and the nation’s changing political-economic terrain. I examine the work of Black ex-communists, white hipsters, anti-academic poets, queer filmmakers, and independent journalists, connecting communities typically treated separately to historicize “the underground” as many have the avant-garde. Second, how can we better conceptualize the politics of culture in materialist terms? I am interested in the ways cultural practices can be constitutive of the human capacity of labor, a perspective that reframes debates about cultural politics in terms of human sustenance and care.
My scholarship revolves around two broad questions. First, how have individuals and collectives of the twentieth century theorized and creatively realized radical political projects in their own languages and forms ? This question animates an ongoing book project tentatively titled Underground Culture: Excavating the History of an Alternative, which explores the history of the idea of “underground culture” in the American twentieth century, rooting it in postwar debates about politics, aesthetics, and the nation’s changing political-economic terrain. I examine the work of Black ex-communists, white hipsters, anti-academic poets, queer filmmakers, and independent journalists, connecting communities typically treated separately to historicize “the underground” as many have the avant-garde. Second, how can we better conceptualize the politics of culture in materialist terms? I am interested in the ways cultural practices can be constitutive of the human capacity of labor, a perspective that reframes debates about cultural politics in terms of human sustenance and care.
Experience
Teaching Assistant Professor in the First Year Experience and Humanities, Stevens Institute of Technology, 2024-Present
Lecturer, Princeton Writing Program, Princeton University, 2018-2024
Professional Writing Consult and Adjunct Instructor, Stevens Institute of Technology, 2016-2018
Lecturer, Princeton Writing Program, Princeton University, 2018-2024
Professional Writing Consult and Adjunct Instructor, Stevens Institute of Technology, 2016-2018
Professional Societies
- CCCC – Conference on College Composition and Communication Member
- NCTE – National Council of Teachers of English Member
- CSA – Cultural Studies Association Member
- ASA – American Studies Association Member
Selected Publications
Articles
Cashbaugh, Sean. “Back to Basics with Labor-Power: The Problem of Culture and Social Reproduction Theory,” Lateral 10, no. 2 (Fall 2021), https://doi.org/10.25158/L10.2.3.
Cashbaugh, Sean.“Marxism and American Culture,” Syllabus 7, no. 1 (Spring 2018). https://syllabusjournal.org/index/php/syllabus/article/view/233
Cashbaugh, Sean. “Hipness Left Behind: White Encounters with Hip in the Early Twentieth Century,” Quarterly Horse: A Journal of Brief American Studies 1, no. 2 (Winter 2017). http://www.quarterlyhorse.org/winter17/cashbaugh.
Cashbaugh, Sean. “A Paradoxical, Discrepant, and Mutant Marxism: The Emergence of a Radical Science Fiction in the American Popular Front,” The Journal for the Study of Radicalism 10, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 63-106.
Essays in Edited Collections
Cashbaugh, Sean. “Wrecking a Sentence.” In Pocket Instructor: Writing, edited by Amanda Irwin Wilkins and Keith Shaw. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024.
Selected Book Reviews
Cashbaugh, Sean. Review of Autonomy, Refusal, and the Black Bloc: Positioning Class Analysis in Critical and Radical Theory by Robert T. Carley. Journal for the Study of Radicalism 15, no. 1 (2021): 167-169.
Cashbaugh, Sean. Review of Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory by Enzo Traverso. H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews (January 2018). http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=49069.
Cashbaugh, Sean. Review of Left of the Left: My Memories of Sam Dolgoff by Anatole Dolgoff. H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews (February 2017). http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=47425.
Cashbaugh, Sean. Review of American Pulp: How Pulp Magazines Brought Modernism to Main Street by Paula Rabinowitz. Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis 80, no. 3 (July 2016): 422-424.
Cashbaugh, Sean. “Back to Basics with Labor-Power: The Problem of Culture and Social Reproduction Theory,” Lateral 10, no. 2 (Fall 2021), https://doi.org/10.25158/L10.2.3.
Cashbaugh, Sean.“Marxism and American Culture,” Syllabus 7, no. 1 (Spring 2018). https://syllabusjournal.org/index/php/syllabus/article/view/233
Cashbaugh, Sean. “Hipness Left Behind: White Encounters with Hip in the Early Twentieth Century,” Quarterly Horse: A Journal of Brief American Studies 1, no. 2 (Winter 2017). http://www.quarterlyhorse.org/winter17/cashbaugh.
Cashbaugh, Sean. “A Paradoxical, Discrepant, and Mutant Marxism: The Emergence of a Radical Science Fiction in the American Popular Front,” The Journal for the Study of Radicalism 10, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 63-106.
Essays in Edited Collections
Cashbaugh, Sean. “Wrecking a Sentence.” In Pocket Instructor: Writing, edited by Amanda Irwin Wilkins and Keith Shaw. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024.
Selected Book Reviews
Cashbaugh, Sean. Review of Autonomy, Refusal, and the Black Bloc: Positioning Class Analysis in Critical and Radical Theory by Robert T. Carley. Journal for the Study of Radicalism 15, no. 1 (2021): 167-169.
Cashbaugh, Sean. Review of Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory by Enzo Traverso. H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews (January 2018). http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=49069.
Cashbaugh, Sean. Review of Left of the Left: My Memories of Sam Dolgoff by Anatole Dolgoff. H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews (February 2017). http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=47425.
Cashbaugh, Sean. Review of American Pulp: How Pulp Magazines Brought Modernism to Main Street by Paula Rabinowitz. Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis 80, no. 3 (July 2016): 422-424.
Courses
Courses Taught at Stevens
HASS 103C: Writing and Communications (Community)
PRV 101: First Year Experience
Past Courses
American Dissent
Marxism and American Culture
Rhetoric of Science Fiction
Rhetoric and Writing
HASS 103C: Writing and Communications (Community)
PRV 101: First Year Experience
Past Courses
American Dissent
Marxism and American Culture
Rhetoric of Science Fiction
Rhetoric and Writing