Education

PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1980

Specialization

Modern Southern literature and culture
American Regionalism
Western literature
Editorial Board, The Flannery O'Connor Review.
Editorial Board, The Mississippi Quarterly.
Series Editor, Southern Revivals, University of South Carolina Press
Editorial Board, "New Directions in Southern Studies" book series, University of North Carolina Press.

Courses

ENGL 285    Themes in American Writing: Literature of the West and the Western Hero
SOST 405/ENGL 429    Southern Writers and the West
SOST 500  The National and Global South

Accolades

   • 2010 PROSE Award, given by the Association of American Publishers, for the best book published in literature, language, and linguistics in 2009 (for The Fourth Ghost: White Southern Writers and European Fascism, 1930-1950).
   • 2008 Warren-Brooks Award for Academic Excellence (for The Fourth Ghost: White Southern Writers and European Fascism, 1930-1950).
   • John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2003-2004.
   • Lamar Lecture Series Speaker, Mercer University, October 1998.
   • Bicentennial Chair in American Studies, Senior Fulbright Appointment, University of Helsinki, 1994-1995.

Activities

I have recently been working on Flannery O’Connor, something I haven’t done in a while.  This past summer, I taught at a NEH Summer Institute on Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor, and I gave a public lecture comparing the fiction of O’Connor with that of Eudora Welty, including looks at their recent critical receptions.  I will be revising this talk for publication in the coming months.  I am continuing work on my longer project on craftsmanship and handwork in the construction of Southern identity, as seen in representative writers of the twentieth century, including Booker T. Washington, the Nashville Agrarians, James Agee, Eudora Welty, and Cormac McCarthy.  I may sneak O’Connor into this project, though I’m not sure at this point.

Publications

   • The Fourth Ghost: White Southern Writers and European Fascism, 1930-1950. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009.
   • Remapping Southern Literature: Contemporary Southern Writers and the West. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000. Delivered as the 42nd Annual Lamar Lectures at Mercer University (October 1998). Paperback edition, with new preface, published in November 2007.
   • Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Development: Primitivism, Traditionalism, and Totalitarianism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.
   • The Art and Vision of Flannery O=Connor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
   • Three Catholic Writers of the Modern South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985.