Culler earned his B.A. at UC Berkeley and his Ph.D. at MIT. Culler is married to deconstructionist critic Cynthia Chase. He faced a primary challenge from two competitors&colon; Simon Winston, and Anthony Culler. Clyburn defeated the Republican candidate Anthony Culler, 73% to 25%. In "Structuralist Poetics" Culler warns against applying the technique of linguistics directly to literature. The twitch had been previously observed by Shurrager and Culler in 1940. His first wife died in 1981; Koch married his second wife, Karen Culler, in 1994. Culler fell seriously ill and was transferred to hospital. Culler founded Arch Rock, a company that makes wireless networked sensors. Culler calls the "darkling plain" Arnold's "central statement" of the human condition.