Associate Professor of English
Unwelcome Voices: Subversive Fiction in the Antebellum South
***
Evelyn Scott: Recovering a Lost Modernist
Education
Ph.D. in English, University of Tennessee at Knoxville,
1999
Dissertation: "The Subversive South: Genre Play,
Aristocratic Ideology, and Antebellum Southern
Literature"
M.A. in English, University of Arkansas, 1994
B.A. in English, University of Arkansas, 1991
Publications
Books
Unwelcome Voices: Subversive Fiction in the Antebellum South, Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2005.
Evelyn Scott: Recovering a Lost Modernist, edited with Dorothy Scura, Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2001.
Articles / Book Chapters
"'That I could look . . . on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning': Walt Whitman’s Anti-Gallows Writing and the Appeal to Christian Sympathy," forthcoming in Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 27 (Fall 2009)
"Trust Thyself?: Teaching Poe’s Murder Tales in the Context of Transcendental Self-Reliance," Approaches to Teaching Poe’s Prose and Poetry, eds. Anthony Magistrale and Jeffrey Weinstock, New York: MLA, 2009. 154-60.
"'I put my fingers around my throat and squeezed it, to know how it feels': Anti-Gallows Sentimentalism and E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand," Legacy 25 (2008): 41-61.
"The Politics of Poetry: The Democratic Review and the Gallows Verse of William Wordsworth and John Greenleaf Whittier," American Periodicals 17 (2007): 1-25.
"Recovering Southern Identity in Evelyn Scott’s Migrations and Escapade," Mississippi Quarterly 59 (2006): 559-78.
"Burning Mrs. Southworth: True Womanhood and the Intertext of Ellen Glasgow's Virginia," Southern Literary Journal 37 (Fall 2004): 25-4o.
"A Re-Awakening: Anne Tyler's Postfeminist Edna Pontellier in Ladder of Years," Critique 44 (Spring 2003): 271-83; reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 205, ed. Jeffrey Hunter, Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. 319-26.
"William Gilmore Simms's Last Word on Slavery: The Racial Politics of 'Bald-Head Bill Bauldy' and 'The Humours of the Manager,'" Southern Quarterly 41 (Winter 2003): 110-18.
"The Danger of Sympathy: Edgar Allan Poe's 'Hop-Frog' and the Abolitionist Rhetoric of Pathos," Journal of American Studies 35 (August 2001): 239-54.
"This Dainty Woman's Hand . . . Red with Blood:' E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand as Abolitionist Narrative," ATQ 15 (March 2001): 59-80.
"Becoming (M)Other: The Anxiety of Maternity in Evelyn Scott's Escapade," Evelyn Scott: Recovering a Lost Modernist, eds. Dorothy Scura and Paul C. Jones, Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2001. 37-52.
"Copying What the Master Had Written: Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave and the Southern Historical Romance," Southern Quarterly 38 (Summer 2000): 78-92.
"William Gilmore Simms's Revolt against the Romance: The Golden Christmas and As Good As A Comedy," South Carolina Review 31 (Fall 1998): 67-76.
Reference Articles
"Evelyn Scott's Nonfiction Prose: A Supplemental Bibliography," Mississippi Quarterly 59 (2006): 627-39.
"Michael Cunningham," Dictionary of Literary Biography: 21st-Century American Novelists, eds. Suzanne Green and Lisa Abney, Detroit: Gale, 2004. 55-61.
"Historical Romance," The Companion to Southern Literature, eds. Joseph Flora and Lucinda MacKethan, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2001. 335-40.
"Joseph Holt Ingraham" and "Hamilton C. Jones," American National Biography, ed. John Garraty, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999, Vol. 11, 658-59, and Vol. 12, 196-97.
"Ellen Gilchrist," Contemporary Southern Writers, ed. Roger Matuz, Detroit: St. James P, 1998. 159-61.
Book Reviews
Review of The Tell-Tale Corpse, by Harold Schechter, Edgar Allan Poe Review 8 (Spring 2007): 88-90.
Review of The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl, Edgar Allan Poe Review 7 (Fall 2006): 76-79.
Review of Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chestnutt, by Matthew Wilson, Ohioana Quarterly 49 (Summer 2006): 56-58.
Review of William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life, by Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson, Ohioana Quarterly 48 (Fall 2005): 318-20.
Review of Blood & Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861-1937, by Sarah Gardner, Southern Studies 12 (Fall/Winter 2005): 167-170.
Review of Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Family and Sectionalism in the Virginia Novels of Kennedy, Caruthers, and Tucker, 1830-1845, by John Hare, Southern Quarterly (Fall 2003): 140-43.
Works in Progress
A book-length study of how American literary figures of the antebellum
period were involved in the movement to abolish the death penalty.
Two pieces of this project have been recently published in
American Periodicals and Legacy. I am currently working
on a chapter exploring the relationship between popular antebellum crime
fiction and the antigallows movement.
Conference Presentations and Public Lectures
"The Places of Edgar Allan Poe: Where He Lived, Where He Wrote, and Why it Matters," West Virginia Humanities Council, Charleston, WV, May 2009
"'The Laws Will Be Obeyed': Sympathy and the State in E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Lost Heiress," Southworth Symposium, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, April 2009
"The Americanization of Jack Sheppard: Antebellum Crime Fiction and Anti-Gallows Sympathy," Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A & M, College Station, TX, March 2009
"'The Singer in the Prison': Sympathetic Identification as Anti-Capital Punishment Argument in the Work of Walt Whitman and Johnny Cash," Midwest Modern Language Association, Cleveland, OH, November 2007
"Marrying the Prince of Darkness: Racial Panic and Gothic Conventions in E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Hickory Hall," Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia, PA, November 2006
"'The Happy Valley had a cloud over it': Hawthorne’s Rewriting of Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas in The House of the Seven Gables," Transatlanticism in American Literature: Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe, Oxford, UK, July 2006
"Writing the Gallows: The Opposing Visions of Wordsworth and Whittier," College English Association, Indianapolis, IN, April 2005
"'Such a Dreadful Deed': E.D.E.N. Southworth's Anti-Capital Punishment Argument and The Hidden Hand," American Literature Association, San Francisco, CA, May 2004
"Relocating the South in Evelyn Scott's Escapade and Migrations," Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Chapel Hill, NC, March 2004
"Taming Capitola: The Dramatizations of E.D.E.N.
Southworth's The Hidden Hand," Society for the Study of
American Women Writers, Fort Worth, TX, September 2003
"Trust Thyself?: Poe's Fiends and the
Transcendentalist View of Human Nature,"
Rediscovering Poe, A Program for High School Teachers
Sponsored by the Ping Institute for the Teaching of the
Humanities, Athens, OH, April 2003
"'Prophet of a Civilization Buried Alive': Poe, the
Raven, and the House of Usher in Ishmael Reed's Flight
to Canada," International Poe Conference,
Baltimore, MD, October 2002
"The Transcendentalist as Monster in Poe's Horror
Fiction," Midwest Modern Language Association,
Cleveland, OH, November 2001
"Getting This House in Order: Women and the State of
the South in Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and
Southworth's The Hidden Hand," Society for
the Study of Southern Literature, Orlando, FL, April 2000
"'Hop-Frog': Poe's Critique of the Abolitionist
Rhetoric of Pathos," International Poe Conference,
Richmond, VA, October 1999
"Burning Mrs. Southworth: From True Woman to New
Woman in Ellen Glasgow's Virginia," South
Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta, GA,
November 1998
"'Shaking Off the Dust of Old Virginia': Frederick
Douglass's The Heroic Slave and the Tradition of the
Virginia Novel," Society for the Study of Southern
Literature, Charleston, SC, April 1998
"A Re-Awakening: Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years
and the Legacy of Edna Pontellier," Crossing the
Lines: A Conference on Contemporary Southern Women
Writers, Fayetteville, AR, October 1997
"Becoming (M)Other: The Anxiety of Maternity in
Evelyn Scott's Escapade," "Back Home
In Tennessee": An Evelyn Scott Celebration,
Knoxville, TN, April 1997
"'Writing in the Spaces Left': Frederick Douglass's
Narrative as Radicalized Romance," Self and Other:
The Fifth International Conference on Narrative,
Lexington, KY, October 1996
"A Last Word on Slavery: The Racial Politics of
Simms's Final Fiction," Simms Society
Conference, Starkville, MS, April 1995
Teaching Positions
Ohio University, Dept. of English, Assistant Professor, Fall 2002-Summer 2007; Associate Professor, Fall 2007-Present
Courses Taught:
- English 201: Critical Approaches to Fiction
- English 250: Textual Analysis
- English 253: Survey of American Literature
- English 254: Writing and Research in English Studies
- English 307J: Writing and Research in English Studies
- English 308J: Advanced Composition
- English 321: American Literature to 1865
- English 322: American Literature, 1865-1918
- English 323: American Literature, 1918 to Present
- English 327: African American Fiction
- English 398T: Honors Tutorial in American Literature to 1900
- English 460: Special Topics--American Women Writers of 19th Century
- English 460: Special Topics--American Gothic Literature
- English 465: Major American Authors--Nathaniel Hawthorne
- English 465: Major American Authors--American Women Writers of 19th Century
- English 530/730: Graduate Seminar--Sympathy in 19th Century American Literature
- English 570o/775b: Graduate Seminar--American Gothic
- English 570o/775b: Graduate Seminar--American Romanticism
Oakland University, Dept. of English, Assistant Professor, Fall 2001-Spring 2002
Courses Taught:
- English 224: American Literature Survey
- English 318: American Literature, 1820-1865
- English 451: Major Authors--Hawthorne and Poe
- English 545: Novel and Nationhood--American Fiction 1790-1830
Converse College, Dept. of English, Visiting Assistant Professor, Fall 2000-Summer 2001
Courses Taught:
- English 101: Freshman Composition
- English 102: Introduction to Literature
- English 350/550: Nineteenth-Century American Literature
- English 370/570: American Women Writers
- English 380/580: Special Topic: The Literature of Slavery
- English 394/594: Literary Criticism
University of Tennessee, Dept. of English, Graduate Teaching Associate, Fall 1994-Spring 1999; Instructor, Fall 1999-Summer 2000
Courses Taught:
- English 101: Freshman Composition I
- English 102: Freshman Composition II
- English 231: American Literature, Colonial Period to Civil War
- English 232: American Literature, Civil War to Present
- English 233: African American Literature
- English 252: Introduction to Drama
- English 253: Introduction to Fiction
- English 332: Women in American Literature
- English 441: Southern Literature
University of Arkansas, Dept. of English, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Spring 1992-Fall 1993
Courses Taught:
- English 1003: Developmental Writing
- English 1013: Freshman Composition I
- English 1023: Freshman Composition II