DR. PETER SCHOCK

Professor and Department Chair
Ph.D., University of Iowa, 1989

Peter Schock was born in Waukegan, Illinois and spent his childhood in Lake Forest, one of the Northshore communities near Chicago. His family moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1969, and so he got to pass through adolescence in the halcyon days of the Golden State. Almost famous at the age of 18, he gave up the potential adulation of millions, quit the garage band, and went off to college (see photo, reproduced by permission of Rolling Stone Magazine). At California State University at Humboldt, he decided early on that he wanted to teach literature for a living, a decision he credits almost entirely to the influence of his two principal teachers there, Richard Day and Russ McGaughey. After earning a B.A. in English, he began graduate study at the University of Iowa, focusing on English Romanticism, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, and the History of Criticism. His mentor there was John E. Grant, an expert on William Blake.

Schock came to UNO upon completing the Ph.D. in 1989, and he has enjoyed working with our students ever since. Teaching Romanticism has always appealed to him because of its presentation of various forms of Idealism, its lyricism, and its myth-making and visionary qualities. He served as our department’s graduate coordinator from 1997 to 2004; his current position, department chair, is the hardest job he’s ever held, but he does find it exhilarating and satisfying. Schock’s research and writing center on the historical contexts of English Romanticism. Romantic Satanism: Myth and the Historical Moment in Blake, Byron, and Shelley (Palgrave, 2003) studies the treatment of Christian demonology by three writers at odds with religious and political orthodoxy. He has begun a second book, on Coleridge and the Unitarian tradition; he is also at work on a nonfiction treatment of his father’s experience as a U.S. Navy Submarine Service officer in World War II.

Schock’s interests are reading (what else?) fiction and poetry, enjoying music (especially Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, and Wagner), gorging on popular culture, and tackling home remodeling projects so large that they overwhelm his limited skills and take forever to finish (this, he says, is fun and relaxing). He is the founding president of the New Orleans Scotch Club, an organization devoted to the advancement of single-malt Scotch whiskies. He lives in Gentilly Terrace, where Little Sandy and Bella also make their home.

Phone Number:
(504) 280-6274

Email Dr. Schock@
pschock@uno.edu

Address: Liberal Arts Building 201A

Office Hours:

M-TH 10:00am-12:00pm;
3:00-4:30pm

Courses for Spring 2010:

Engl 4801-001:
Prose and Poetry of the Early Romantic Period
TTH 1:30-2:45pm