Professional Bio
Ted Atkinson joined the MSU faculty in 2009. His areas of research and teaching interest include southern studies; U.S. literature and culture, post-1900; William Faulkner; and cultural studies. Atkinson has recently taught courses on selected novels of the Southern Renaissance, Literary Mississippi, Southern Geographies, Postsouthern Turns, and The Global American South. Atkinson’s publications include a book, Faulkner and the Great Depression: Aesthetics, Ideology, and Cultural Politics (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2006), essays in several collections, and articles in Journal of American Studies, Mississippi Quarterly, Studies in American Culture, Faulkner Journal, and Southern Literary Journal. Atkinson is currently working on a new book manuscript on representations of Mississippi in American culture.
Education:
Ph.D. 2001 Louisiana State University
M.A. 1996 Mississippi College
B.A. 1990 University of Mississippi
Teaching Interests:
Southern studies; U.S. literature, 1900-present; film
Courses:
- The Global American South (Fall 2012)
- Postsouthern Turns (Fall 2011)
- Southern Geographies (Spring 2011)
- Literary Mississippi (Fall 2010)
Research
Book Manuscript in Progress
Anywhere South: Reconstructing Mississippi in the American Imaginary
In Print
Book
Faulkner and the Great Depression: Aesthetics, Ideology, and Cultural Politics (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2006). Link to UGA Press author’s page: http://www.ugapress.uga.edu/index.php/books/
faulkner_and_great_depression/
Articles and Book Chapters
“‘Blood Petroleum’: True Blood, the BP Oil Spill, and Fictions of Energy/Culture.” Journal of American Studies. Available: FirstView, August 2012, 1-17, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8653998
“The Impenetrable Lightness of Being: Miscegenation Imagery and the Anxiety of Whiteness in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses,” Faulkner and Formalism: Returns of the Text, Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 2008. University Press of Mississippi, 2012. http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1488
“Hellhound on His Trail: Faulknerian Blood-guilt and the Traumatized Form of Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle.” Southern Literary Journal 44.1 (2011): 19-36.
“Absalom, Absalom! in Context,” Critical Insights: Absalom, Absalom! Ed. David Madden. Salem Press, 2011. 63-78.
“Seeing Red in the Free State of Jones: Confederates, Communism, and the Cold Civil War in Tap Roots,” Studies in American Culture 33.1 (2010): 1-15.
“Redeeming Depravity: The Legacy of Southwestern Humor in Caldwell’s Tobacco Road and Brown’s Father and Son,” Studies in American Humor 17.3 (2008): 117-29.
“The State.” A Companion to William Faulkner. Ed. Richard C. Moreland. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. 220-35.
“The Ideology of Autonomy: Form and Function in As I Lay Dying,” Faulkner Journal 21.1-2 (2005-2006): 15-27.
“Testing the Limits of Tragedy: History and Ideology in John Faulkner’s Dollar Cotton,” Mississippi Quarterly 54.4 (2001): 527-38.
“Aesthetic Ideology in Faulkner’s Mosquitoes: A Cultural History,” Faulkner Journal 17.1 (2001): 3-18.
Forthcoming
“Defying the Cultural Logic of Southern Exceptionalism in Absalom, Absalom! and Song of Solomon.”Faulkner and Morrison. Ed. Robert W. Hamblin and Christopher Rieger. Southeast Missouri State University Press.
“Literary Mississippi and the New Southern Studies.” Invited essay for Writing in the Crooked-Letter State: A History of Mississippi Literature. Ed. Lorie Watkins. University Press of Mississippi.
“Labor.” Invited essay for Critical Terms for Southern Studies. Ed. Scott Romine and Jennifer Rae Greeson. University of Georgia Press.
“Mississippi (and Bensonhurst) Burning: Fantasies of Containment, Racist Enjoyment, and the Real of Social Evil.” A History of Evil in Popular Culture: What Hannibal Lecter, Stephen King, and Vampires Reveal About America. Ed. Sharon Packer and Jody Pennington. Praeger Press.
“Faulkner.” American Literary Scholarship 2010. Duke University Press.
“Southern Agrarians.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History. Ed. Eric Stannard. Ed. Scott E. Casper and Joan Shelley Rubin. Oxford University Press.
Professional Affiliations and Service
- Vice President, The William Faulkner Society, 2012-2015
- Member, Modern Language Association
- Member, Society for the Study of Southern Literature
- Member, American Studies Association
- Member, Southern American Studies Association
- Member, Popular Culture Association of the South/American Culture Association of the South
- Member, Eudora Welty Society
