Language and Communication Home » FAQ for Language and Communication Faculty and Students » Departmental Faculty » Dr. James A. Crank
Assistant Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies in English
• Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• B.A., Washington University in St. Louis
Personal Statement:
I teach a wide range of courses that usually relate to one of three main areas: American literature and culture (including issues of ethnicity, sexuality, and class), Southern literature and culture, and Film Studies. In the Fall of 2008, Dr. Bauman and I created the film studies concentration for the English major; the concentration focuses on film theory, genre study, history, as well as major directors and movements in world cinema. I currently serve as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the department; in this role, I advise our majors and minors on courses as well as career choices after graduation. Though much of my research has focused on Tennessee poet/novelist James Agee, I have also written on American writers Sherman Alexie, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Clyde Edgerton, Marilou Awiakta and Ralph Ellison. I am currently editing The Morning Watch and Collected Short Prose of James Agee, the third volume in the University of Tennessee Press' The Collected Works of James Age. In addition, I review books for The Southern Literary Journal and continue my work on a manuscript I have tentatively titled The Myth of Exceptionalism: Post Renaissance Southern Writers.
Research and teaching interests:
American literature and culture, especially African, Native and Asian American literature
Southern literature and culture, especially Southern Renaissance and contemporary writers
Film and Film Studies
Theories of race, class, gender, and sexuality
Courses:
American Modernisms, 1860-2009
Going Native: Native American Literature
Southern Renaissance
Contemporary Southern Literature
Film Theory
Major American Writers
Modern Drama
Selected publications:
"Paternal Nightmare: Division and Masculinity in the Restored Edition of A Death in the Family." The Southern Literary Journal (forthcoming).
The Morning Watch and Collected Short Prose of James Agee, editor (U of Tennessee Press 2010).
"The Body as Sacrifice: Ritual Violence in The Morning Watch." in Agee Agonistes: Essays on the Life and Works of James Agee, ed. Michael Lofaro. University of Tennessee Press: 2006: 344-370.
"‘A Piece of the Body Torn Out by the Roots': Failure, Language and the Limits of the Fictive in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." Mississippi Quarterly.
James Agee and the Wounded Body (Under Review).
