To crunch on words— Denise Levertov, “A Common Ground"
grown in grit or fine
crumbling earth, sweet
to eat and sweet
to be given, to be eaten
in common, by laborer
and hungry wanderer.
Faculty Information
Additional Faculty Information for Christina J. Lambert
Education
Ph.D., Baylor University
M.A., Baylor University
B.A., Hillsdale College
Memberships
The International T. S. Eliot Society
Conference on Christianity and Literature
Modernist Studies Association
Publications
“Ancient Feast and Urban Sacrifice in The Cocktail Party.” T. S. Eliot’s Drama: Critical Perspectives, edited by Fabio Vericat and Didac Llorens-Cubedo, University of Edinburgh Press, 2026, pp. 86-110.
“‘more than a little strange’: Imagination and Ecology in Jayber Crow.” Christianity and Literature, vol. 74 no. 2, 2025, pp. 270-288.
“‘Learning to be Affected’: Food Studies and The Waste Land.” T. S. Eliot Studies Annual, vol. 7, 2025, pp. 139-153.
“The Books on the Bedside Table: Re-Reading ‘Mother’ in E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 69, no. 4, 2023, pp. 669–86.
“A Home for Hannah Crafts: Ecofeminism in The Bondwoman’s Narrative.” Tulsa Studies in
Women’s Literature, vol. 41, 2022, pp. 46-63.
“‘Beside this corrupt and holy stream’: Sacramental Water in Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow.”
Christianity and Literature, vol. 70, no. 4, 2021, pp. 439-455.
Biography
Dr. Christina J. Lambert teaches American literature, specializing in poetry and drama. She earned her Ph.D. at Baylor University, and her research areas include food studies, eco-criticism, and religious ritual in twentieth-century literature. She teaches upper-level seminars on the poetry of T. S. Eliot and Denise Levertov and a one-credit course on the fiction of Wendell Berry. Her current book project explores the intersection of food imagery and religious ritual in the poetry and drama of T. S. Eliot and Denise Levertov.
Attention to the material world—be it a dish of Cherries Jubilee, the river running through Port William, or “East Coker’s” “dripping blood” and “bloody flesh”—informs her research and teaching, as she explores how literature helps us imagine what Denise Levertov describes as an “intricately incarnate” world.