Arts & SciencesCollege of Arts & Sciences Department of English

Directory

Dr. James A. Crank

Dr. James A. Crank

Associate Professor

Education

  • PhD, University of North Carolina
  • MA, University of North Carolina
  • BA, Washington University in St. Louis, summa cum laude,

Research Areas

  • Literature

Bio

James A. Crank is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Alabama, a former National Humanities Center Summer Fellow, and co-host of the podcast “The Sound and the Furious.” A contributor to the BBC as well as the PBS television show “The Great American Read,” Crank’s essays have appeared in Agee Agonistes: Essays on the Life, Legend, and Works of James Agee and Southerners on Film: Essays on Hollywood Portrayals since the 1970s, and his books include Understanding Sam Shepard, New Approaches to Gone with the Wind, and Race and New Modernisms. He is working on a monograph tentatively titled Dirty Souths: Southern Culture, Trash, and Rhetorics of Disposability, 1970-2020.

Selected Recent Publications

Books

Dirty Souths: Southern Culture, Trash, and Rhetorics of Disposability, 1970-2020.: in progress.

Race and New Modernisms. co-authored with K. Merinda Simmons. Bloomsburg Press: in-press (expected Winter 2019).

Understanding Randall Kenan. University of South Carolina Press: accepted, in-press (expected March 2019).

The Morning Watch and Selected Short Prose of James Agee. James Crank, ed. University of Tennessee Press: in press (expected Fall/Winter 2019).

New Approaches to Gone With the Wind. James Crank, ed. Louisiana State University Press, December 14, 2015.

Understanding Sam Shepard. University of South Carolina Press, October 31, 2012.

Essays

“The Impossible Child/The Quare Kid.” south: an interdisciplinary journal: special issue: Queer Southern Childhoods, Katherine Henninger, ed.: accepted: in-press (expected Fall 2019).

“Ace Atkins, True Detective, and the Mystery of the “No-Orleans.” Detecting the South,   Deborah Barker, ed. Louisiana State University Press: accepted, in press (expected     Spring 2019).

“‘In the Service of an Anger’: Let us Now Praise Famous Men and the American Civil Rights Movement,” in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men at 75, ed. Michael A. Lofaro, January    25, 2017: 211-226.

“The Plantation is Burning: Queer Melancholies, Violent Intimacies, and Plantation Camp in     Django Unchained.” The Global South, 10.2, Plantation Modernity (Fall 2016): 99-114.

“Down N’ Dirty.” south: an interdisciplinary journal 48.2, Spring 2016: 157-169.

“Too Big to Fail?: Gone with the Wind @ the 21st Century” & “Queer Winds: Sexual Transgressions in Gone with the Wind,” in New Approaches to Gone With the Wind. James Crank, ed. Louisiana State University Press, December 15, 2015: 1-7 & 95-109.

“The Hunger Games”: Southern Cookin’ in an Apocalyptic Time.” Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South 22.2, Winter/Fall 2015: 34-43.

“Unkillable Mockingbird,” Los Angeles Review of Books. Summer 2015: 29-32.          https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/unkillable-mockingbird

“Remembering Patsy Yaeger: A Written Roundtable” Mississippi Quarterly 67.1, Winter 2014: 4-30.

“Racial Violence, Receding Bodies: James Agee’s Anatomy of Guilt,” in Agee at 100, ed. Michael A. Lofaro University of Tennessee Press: April, 2012, 53-74.

“An Aesthetic of Play: A Contemporary Cinema of South-Sploitation.” in Southerners on Film, ed. Andrew Leiter, McFarland Press, 2011, 204-216.

“The Saddest Joke: Sherman Alexie’s Blues” in Bloom’s Literary Themes: Dark Humor, ed Blake Hobby. New York: Chelsea House: 2010, 219-228.

“Paternal Nightmare: Division and Masculinity in the Restored Edition of A Death in the Family.” Southern Literary Journal 42.2, Spring 2010: 73-88.

“‘A Piece of the Body Torn Out by the Roots’: Failure and Fragmentation in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” Mississippi Quarterly 62:1, Winter 2008-09: 163-17

“The Body as Sacrifice: Ritual Violence in The Morning Watch.” in Agee Agonistes: Essays on the Life and Works of James Agee, ed. Michael A. Lofaro; Knoxville: University of  Tennessee Press: 2006, 344-370.

Reviews and Misc. Publications

Editor, “Dirt and Desire”: Special Issue of south: an interdisciplinary journal 48.2, Spring 2016.

Editor, The Society for the Study of Southern Literature Newsletter, (2015 – present): http://southernlit.org/

Rev. of Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal. Southern Literary Journal 47.1, Fall 2014: 125-129.

Rev. of Susan Srigley, ed., Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear it Away. Southern Literary Journal 47.1, Fall 2014:125-129.

Rev. of Carol Shloss, Flannery O’Connor’s Dark Comedies: The Limits of Inference. Southern Literary Journal 47.1, Fall 2014: 125-129.

Rev. of Coleman Hutchison, Apples and Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America. Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South 20.2, Fall/Winter 2013: 117-119.

Rev. of Tim Ryan, Call and Repsonses: The American Novel of Slavery Since Gone With the Wind. Southern Literary Journal 43, Fall 2010: 159-163.

Rev. of Lovalerie King, Race, Theft, and Ethics: Property Matters in African American Literature. Southern Literary Journal 43, Fall 2010: 159-163.

Rev. of Peter Schmidt, Sitting in Darkness: New South Fiction, Education, and the Rise of Jim Crow Colonialism, 1865-1920. Southern Literary Journal 43, Fall 2010: 159-163.

“Walker Percy,” in KNOWLA: The Online Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture    (2009).

“Walker Evans,” “Helen Levitt,” “Works Progress Association,” “Farm Security           Administration” in Encyclopedia of 20th Century Photography, ed. Lynn Warren. Taylor and Francis: 2005.

“William Jay Smith.” in Companion to 20th Century American Poetry, ed. Burt Kimmelman, Facts on File: 2005.