David Spitzer
INSTRUCTOR OF ENGLISH
Fall 2026
Degrees
PhD in Comparative Literature, Binghamton University
MA in Philosophy, Binghamton University
MFA in Creative Writing (poetry), Vermont College of Fine Arts
BA in Liberal Studies, Goddard College
Specializations
early Greek thinking & its modern and contemporary reception
philosophy & translation
philosophy & literature
translation
Passions
family: I have been married since 1999 and am father of three children (born in 2000, 2009, and 2012)
reading, research, & writing
poetry & translating
living waters, especially oceans & seas
bicycling--I find that my other passions accompany me and present themselves in new and fascinating ways during a ride
swimming
playing tennis
listening to music, especially orchestral and chamber music
playing the drums (not orchestral music)
reading novels
Distractions
Distraction suggests being drawn off course. What if I think of being drawn off course as a significant dimension of my experience, rich with possible meanings and understandings? What if the movement of attention across locations and events enables, as Emerson wrote, a renewed perspective on the various focal points of attention and their relationships with one another? Might distraction then gain the character of something like dynamic attention or attentive circulation?
Courses Taught
At Millersville: Introduction to College Writing, Reading our World
At Penn State University Mont Alto: Classical Mythology, Literature & Philosophy, Literature of Exploration, Travel, Migration, and Exile
Elsewhere: Introduction to Philosophy, World Literature, Literature and Society
Sample Publications
Selected academic books
Breaking Light: Toward a Poetics of Opacity in Early Greek Thinking (SUNY Press, 2026)
Parmenides & Translation: Figures of Motion, Figures of Being (Peter Lang Verlag, 2025)
Philosophy's Treason: Studies in Philosophy & Translation (Vernon Press, 2020)
Recent peer-reviewed journal articles & book chapters
“Envisioning In-visibility.” Invited postface to The Translator’s Visibility: New Debates and Epistemologies, edited by Larisa Cercel and Alice Leal, 226-44. Routledge, 2025.
“Being-in-touch: Touch, Contact, and Bodies in the Poem of Parmenides.” Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 29, no. 1 (2024): 1-22.
“Trans-philosophy: Translating philosophy on & beyond the boundaries.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 37, no. 3 (2023): 564-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5325/jspecphil.37.4.0564.
Selected poetry & translation
A Heaven Wrought of Iron: Poems from the Odyssey (Etruscan Press, 2016)
“Displacements: Poems of Trauma & Migration from Ancient Greek.” Ancient Exchanges 1, no. 1 (2020).
“Isaak.” Numéro Cinq VI, 5 (2015).
More of my work can be found at my ORCID page.