Publications and Conferences
Trajectories: Border Souths
In the Trajectories section of the Routledge Companion, this article explores the meaning of geographic inclusion of these hybrid areas within southern studies. Questions to be considered are: how does our understanding of literature from these regions shift if the texts are read as cross-regional—equally southern and another designation; is there resistance to “reading” these regions as southern; does that resistance come from without or within? Cormac McCarthy is an author who is emblematic of this type of literature. Each of his novels are set in regions that are both southern and Other. His settings are mainly concentrated in Appalachia and the Southwest, and a spotlight on his work will highlight the issues inherent in cross-regional southern literature.
Routledge Companion to the Literature of the U.S. South, edited by Katharine Burnett, Todd Hagstette, and Monica Miller, Routledge, 2022
The Secret Lives of Ballads: Fan Fiction as Folk Space
Historically, live performances were the primary means for transmitting ballads and folklore, but what about the stories and ballads that are now modified and ‘performed’ online? At the fringes of copyrighted domains, the fan fiction community celebrates the modification and reinterpretation of familiar stories, a process that closely parallels the development of folklore. On Archive of Our Own (AO3), the story “Down Among the Weeds” by Luzula is a thoughtful re-imagining of the old fairy ballad Tam Lin, from the borderlands of Scotland. With instantaneous, global transmission, the fan fiction community has the potential to accelerate the development of new folklore, compressing the gradual process that once took decades into months or weeks.
Ballads of the North: Medieval to Modern, edited by Richard Firth Green and Sandra Straubhaar, Medieval Institute Press, 2019
Grey-Washing Jim Crow: The Colonization of African-American Folk Music
This article explores the collection of black music by white folk collectors during the Jim Crow era in the U.S. South as an act of cultural colonization. The purpose is to analyze white curation of black authenticity as integral to early twentieth century attempts to demonstrate Southern and American exceptionalism–self-conscious and successful attempts by the collectors to shape American cultural memory of the South during the height of the Jim Crow era.
Revue LISA/LISA E-journal, vol. 17, no. 1, 2019, doi: 10.4000/lisa.11015. Created in France in 2003, Revue LISA/LISA e-journal is an international bilingual peer-reviewed publication featuring literary pieces and interviews in French and English.
Book Review: Wild Rose by Louise O’Connor
As part of Texas A&M University Press’s long- running “Clayton Wheat Williams Texas Life” series, Louise O’Connor’s biography of her great-great uncle, Wild Rose: The Life and Times of Victor Marion Rose, is intended for a general audience interested in local Texas history and culture. O’Connor’s familial ties to Victor Marion Rose (1842– 93)—a late nineteenth-century journalist, historian, and sometime poet—are the book’s strength and weakness. Her personal connection and access to family records give a sense of intimacy and insight to the narrative; however, she also has a tendency to act as Rose’s apologist in an effort to frame him as a sympathetic figure for a contemporary audience.
Western American Literature, vol. 54, no. 4., 2020, pp. 456-458, doi: 10.1353/wal.2020.0010.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
Midwest Modern Language Association Convention, Minneapolis, MN, Nov 2022
“An ‘Other’ Texas Border: Analyzing Contemporary East Texas Literature”
National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, Online, Oct 2020
“Empathy in the Writing Center”
UWC Empathy – YouTube
American Literature Association Conference, San Diego, May 2020 (canceled COVID-19)
“South by South(ish): (Re)placing U.S. Transregional Literature into a Southern Context”
Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Conference, New Orleans, (canceled COVID-19)
“An ‘Other’ Texas Border: Analyzing Contemporary East Texas Literature”
European Society for the Study of English Conference, Brno, Czech Republic, August 2018
“Escapist Nationalism: Searching for the Texas South”
Liberal Arts International Conference, Doha, Qatar, February 2018
“The Post-Southern Imposture: Recovering Public Memory Through Personal Recollection”
Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference, Austin, TX, February 2018
“Recovering the Texas South: Using Memoir to Jog the Public Memory”
Memories of Slavery and Colonization Conference, Le Mans, France, November 2017
“Grey-Washing Jim Crow: Colonizing African American Folk Music”
Texas Medieval Association Conference, College Station, TX, September 2016
“Medievalism Twice Removed: Ballads in Film”
Kommission für Volksdichtung/ International Ballad Commission, Limerick, Ireland June 2016
“Fictionalizing the Resistance: The Role of Song in Suzanne Collins’s Mockingjay”
International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2016
“The Secret Lives of Ballads: The Ballad in Digital Folk Space”
Texas A&M University Ballad Symposium, College Station, TX, March 2015
“Parallel Pathways: Ballads, Fanfiction, and the Internet”
Rethinking the Ballad Symposium, Columbus, OH, February 2014
“Ballad Hysteria: A Response to Early Ballad Scholarship”
Victorians Institute Conference, Murfreesboro, TN, November 2013
“Mirror Images: Tom Brown’s Working-Class Reflection”
