Secret Agent Woman
(Image courtesy of Counterpath Press)
Ohio Wesleyan University faculty member Michelle Disler, Ph.D., has published “[BOND, JAMES]: alphabet, anatomy, [auto]biography,” a 95-page book that provides “a sobering examination of the ultimate spy-styled popular thriller, a nuanced deconstruction of model masculinity in mass culture.”
Disler, assistant professor of English, will read from and sign copies of her new book at 7 p.m. Nov. 30 at Beehive Books, 25 N. Sandusky St. Disler says she became interested in author Ian Fleming’s super spy while earning her doctorate at Ohio University during a study of mass culture through the lens of literary theory.
“I … was increasingly fascinated by the Bond in the novels, who is more fallible than the iconic Bond on the silver screen,” Disler says. “The material in ‘[BOND, JAMES]’ came into being while I was writing my dissertation ‘Archipelago,’ which also focuses largely on my dad and his job as a detective, and as I wrote I began to see similarities between Bond and my dad: both detectives, both astonishingly human.”
Of Disler’s new book, writer Catherine Taylor praises the way Disler “catalogues and decodes the spy’s avalanche of allure. And in between the cigarettes and the sex, there’s something else: the thrill of watching her watching, the sensuality of her language and its lightest of touches, the satisfaction of every lurid, tight and shiny detail of Bond’s domain turned into an algebra of desire and fixation. Disler’s book is true to her man: in bed with violence and exploitation, smoking with charisma and charm.”
Disler, who teaches nonfiction writing at Ohio Wesleyan, also was nominated for a 2008 Pushcart Prize in Nonfiction for her writings on James Bond. In addition, she has earned acclaim for her essays about Beaver Island, Michigan, where she spent summers as a child.
Her article, “Building,” is listed in the newly published “The Best American Essays 2011” one of the “Notable Essays of 2010.” Her island-themed essays also have been published in literary journals including “The Laurel Review,” “Painted Bride Quarterly,” “Lake Effect,” and “Columbia.”
Learn more about Disler. Read more about “[BOND, JAMES]: alphabet, anatomy, [auto]biography”or like it on Facebook.
Congratulations to OWU’s own secret agent woman!