Discipline n. v. is a lyric memoir that fuses poetry and academic theory, speaking to the metaphorical power of humanities scholarship. Throughout, Concetta Principe articulates the ‘discipline’ involved in earning a PhD while dealing with a mood disorder, opening up about prejudices that serve as barriers to academic success, the apotheosis being tenure. Embracing the Nachträglichkeit of the traumatic experience of being an old(er) female PhD candidate, Discipline n. v. is ultimately a story of lack and its transformative powers: the student becomes an academic as colonial humanities struggles through its extinction.

Concetta Principe is a writer of poetry and creative non-fiction, and scholarship on the impact of the secular unconscious on culture and political thought. Her recent collection, This Real (Pedlar Press 2017) was long-listed for the League of Canadian Poet’s Raymond Souster Award. Her essays, “Who Shot Meriwether Lewis?” was long-listed for the 2019 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Award at The New Quarterly, and “I Title it ‘Suicide Letter’” was short-listed for The Malahat Review 2019 Constance Rooke award. Her poetry and creative non-fiction has appeared in Canadian and American journals including The Malahat Review, The Capilano Review, experiment-o, and Hamilton Arts and Literature. Her collection, Stars Need Counting: Essays on Suicide, is available from Gordon Hill Press. Her academic monograph exploring trauma in contemporary secular thought, Secular Messiahs and the Return to Paul’s Real: A Lacanian Approach, came out with Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. She teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at Trent University, Durham.

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Discipline, n. v. is a gripping, ironic, groundbreaking expose of a woman's quest to be perceptually alive & embodied in the academy.

Betsy Warland