Born in Lincolnshire to a military family, Dilks attended school in Cyprus, worked on farms and in factories, busked for money in the Paris Metro and across Europe, and has traveled to every state in the USA except Hawaii. Dilks has research interests in Irish modernism, discourses of civil rights, and relationships between art, commerce, and politics. He is currently writing a book about coverage of the Irish Independence movement in nineteenth-century Dublin newspapers. Dilks plays indoor soccer and hosts a music trivia night.
The first in his family to attend school beyond the age of seventeen, Dilks earned a First Class Honors Degree in English Studies, Psychology, and Philosophy from the University of Stirling, Scotland. He completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in English Language and Literature at Rutgers Graduate School in New Jersey.
Ph.D. in English Language and Literature, Rutgers University
M.A. in English Language and Literature, Rutgers University
Irish literature (1800 to present), British literature (1785 to present), postcolonial literature, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and general education courses on popular literature, world literature, beauty, and empire
UMKC Director of Writing Across the Curriculum (1997)
UMKC Director of Composition and Coordinator of the Discourse Program
Co-founder of UMKC’s SEARCH Program
Founding Director of UMKC’s Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching
Co-chair of a Campus-Wide Committee on Diversity and Inclusion
Samuel Beckett in the Literary Marketplace. Syracuse University Press, 2011.
Cultural Conversations: The Presence of the Past. Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2001.