University of Memphis

Literature Faculty

LYNETTE BLACK
Ph.D.-Nebraska
Comparative Literature, Iconography, Renaissance

 Research focus: Dr. Black's work on iconography in the Renaissance explores the cultural dimensions of texts involving the interplay of word and image.
 

THERON BRITT
Ph.D.-Cal. Irvine
Literary Theory; Contemporary American Fiction; Cultural Studies; Postmodernism

 Research focus: Dr. Britt's work on contemporary American narrative integrates research on novels, non-fiction novels, the mass media, and the ideology of the law in American culture.
 

THOMAS CARLSON
Ph.D.-Rutgers
19th-C. American; American Cultural Studies; Translation

 Research focus: Dr. Carlson's current research includes cross-cultural issues of language and discourse communities; he applies theoretical approaches to contemporary popular culture.
 

BARBARA CHING
Ph.D.-Duke
18th Century British; Cultural Studies; Comparative Literature

 Research focus: Dr. Ching's research focuses on the distinctions between high and low culture as they are articulated and sometimes questioned in enlightenment and contemporary texts.
 

KAY P. EASSON
Ph.D.-Tulsa
Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Art; British Romantic Literature and Art

 Research focus: Dr. Easson considers verbal and visual texts according to their publication history and /or their interdisciplinary contexts. Her work frequently focuses on issues of class and gender.
 

CATHERINE MARTIN
Ph.D.-Santa Cruz
Milton, 17th Century Poetry, Shakespeare, Literary Theory

 Research focus: Dr. Martin specializes in literary allegory; the epic tradition and its later development through the Romantic period; and the history of science, philosophy, and economics as they are mediated in poetic/cultural texts of the renaissance and Reformation periods.
 

JAMES W. NEWCOMB
Ph.D.-Iowa
Criticism; Cultural Studies; Film

 Research focus: History of American film forms as emblematic representations of cultural concerns paralleled in the culture at large.

 

WILLIAM O'DONNELL
Ph.D.-Princeton
20th-C. British; Yeats; textual criticism; computer applications

 Research focus: O'Donnells's textual scholarship applies the theoretical aspects of acknowledging the multiple versions of a literary text. His current collaboration in designing an hypermedia electronic edition of the poems of W.B. Yeats brings new rhetorical perspectives in presenting text and corollary information.

 

GENE PLUNKA
Ph.D.-Maryland Professional Writing; Technical Editing; Modern Drama

 Research focus: Dr. Plunka's scholarship represents research on the literary and cultural aspects of dramatic art. His work also explores technical editing as theory and practice.
 

NASEEB SHAHEEN
Ph.D.-UCLA
Shakespeare; Renaissance Literature; The Bible as Literature

 Research focus: Dr. Shaheen's work on Shakespeare's and Spenser's biblical references have become standard reference works for students of Shakespeare and Spenser, and are the definitive works in their fields.
 

CYNTHIA G. TUCKER
Ph.D.-Iowa
European Literature; Biography; Women's Studies

 Research focus: Dr. Tucker's work in the fields of biography, and non-fictive forms of writing, and women's literature explores the process and cultural formation of texts.

 

JENNIFER A. WAGNER
Ph.D.-Yale
Victorian Poetry

 Research focus: Dr. Wagner's research in the nineteenth-century British literature considers the cultural and historical circumstances of surrounding literary texts.
 
 

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English Department