Erik Pihel is the author of Media Strains: A History of Poetry and Technology from Homer to Hip-Hop, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. His articles have appeared in Oral Tradition and the Yeats-Eliot Review, and he has taught American literature, culture and performance, and creative writing courses at the New School for Social Research, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Suffolk Community College. He holds a doctorate in English from SUNY Stony Brook and is currently the bibliography coordinator at the Modern Language Association.