Jaussen joined Lawrence Tech in 2014 as assistant professor of literature and was promoted to associate professor of literature and earned tenure in 2019. He is also director of the Honors program, co-founder and co-director of the “Humanity+Technology” lecture series, and co-principal investigator on the Course-Based Research Experience leadership team.

Prior to joining LTU, he was at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and the University of Washington.

He received joint doctoral degrees in English and Theory and Criticism from the University of Washington in 2010. His research focuses on poetry and poetics, literary theory and criticism, modernism, and contemporary literature. His first book,  Writing in Real Time: Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital   (Cambridge University Press, 2017), uses systems theory as a model for interpreting long poetry across historical periods, ranging from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass to contemporary works by Nathaniel Mackey and Rachel Blau DuPlessis. His essays and reviews have appeared in New Literary History, Contemporary Literature, Comparative Literature, Journal of Modern Literature, and ASAP/J, among others. With Dr. Franco Delogu , he co-directs the Humanity+Technology lecture series at LTU, which has received funding support from the Michigan Humanities Council.

Paul Jaussen's book Writing in Real Time

Currently, Jaussen is co-editing A Companion to American Poetry (Wiley Blackwell) while finishing his second book project on the topic of political language in contemporary literature. 

He teaches courses in world literature, modern poetry, literary theory, and literature and technology.

Jaussen’s research reflects his personality. “I was always interested in science,” he said, “and assumed I would major in a scientific field. But I loved literature, and by the time I applied for college, I pivoted to English, eventually writing my dissertation on American poetry.” Poetry in most people’s minds involves rhymes and rhythms, iambic pentameters and maybe a couplet or quatrain. To Jaussen and others in the world of literary studies and technology, the original meaning of “poetics” is “making.” When they merge, the result is a combined emphasis on making, whether as digital fabrication and modeling, or as philosophical and historical inquiries into the cultural effects of these practices.

In addition to his own research, the Humanity+Technology lecture series , and the emerging plans for a center dedicated to these topics, Jaussen and his colleagues have recently launched a new undergraduate degree for students interested in the relationship between society and technology: the Bachelor of Science in Technological Humanities . Jaussen said, “I think it’s vitally important for us to train students to understand both how these technologies work and their cultural significance.” Such training will enable them to be “informed and free citizens, because these technologies are now inseparable from our public sphere.” All students in this program will take courses in philosophy, literature, and communication alongside computer programming and electives in a technological field of their choosing. Seniors will write an interdisciplinary thesis based on their independent research.

Unique about LTU is that it combines theory and practice. Our degree in technological humanities is endlessly adaptive, offering students a chance to pursue their own interests. As Jaussen notes, it is “a utility knife degree for the twenty-first century. By combining multiple disciplines, we incorporate specific knowledge of technologies with culture, history, politics, social justice, and so much more. We’re preparing our students to be reflective and adaptive, which will position them well for the jobs of the future.” Most importantly, “students in our program can craft their own pathway of learning to create a career that feeds their soul.”

Feeding the hands-on maker and feeding the inquisitive mind.

by Renée Ahee