About

My name is Benjamin D. Hagen, and I am an Associate Professor of English at the University of South Dakota. Sketching a Present represents neither the views of USD’s faculty nor its administration or the South Dakota Board of Regents. This site is merely a self-indulgent—even if somewhat professional—project of pain and pleasure that hopes at most to bump into the lives of other interested folks once in a while. This site is a space for a few of my hobbyhorses—reading poetry aloud, working slowly through a difficult book—but it’s also a drawing board where I might sketch out ideas I hope to explore in my teaching and research.

---