
Education
- PhD
Research Areas
- Early American Literature
- Late American Literature
Selected Publications
Books
- American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1982); reprint, with author’s preface, 2007.
- Re-Writing America: Vietnam Authors in Their Generation (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991).
- Scriptures for a Generation: What We Were Reading in the‘60s (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994).
- The Good War’s Greatest Hits: World War II and American Remembering (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998).
- First Books: The Printed Word and Cultural Formation in Early Alabama (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999).
- Late Thoughts on an Old War: The Legacy of Vietnam. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004); reprint, 2007.
- American Wars, American Peace: Notes from a Son of the Empire. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007).
- The Victory Album: Reflections on the Good Life After the Good War. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010).
- La Isla Llamada el Paraiso/The Island Called Paradise: Cuba in History, Literature, and the Arts. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014).
- Beautiful War: Studies in a Dreadful Fascination. Forthcoming from University of Alabama Press.
Editions
- The Mythologizing of Mark Twain, with Sara D. Davis (University: University of Alabama Press, 1984).
- The Art of Fiction in the Heart of Dixie: An Anthology of Alabama Writers (University: University of Alabama Press, 1986).
- Company K, by William March (University: University of Alabama Press, 1989).
- Rachel’s Children, by Harriet Hassell (University: University of Alabama Press, 1990).
- Dog and Gun, by Johnson J. Hooper (University: University of Alabama Press, 1992).
- Gulf Stream, by Marie Stanley (University: University of Alabama Press, 1993).
- Many Voices, Many Rooms: A New Anthology of Alabama Writers (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997).
- Writing Race Across the Atlantic World: Medieval to Modern, with Gary Taylor (New York: Palgrave Press, 2005).
Articles
- “The Vietnam Novel: An Overview, with a Brief Checklist of Vietnam War Narrative,” Southern Humanities Review, 12, 1 (Winter 1978), 44-55.
- “Franklin’s and Crevecoeur’s ‘Literary’ Americans,” Early American Literature, 13, 1 (Spring 1978), 50-63.
- “Billy Budd: Melville’s Valedictory to Emerson,” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, 24, 4 (4thQuarter 1978), 215-228.
- “Truth-Telling and Literary Values in the Vietnam Novel,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 78, 2 (Spring, 1979), 141-156.
- “Realistic Style and the Problem of Context in The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It,” American Literature, 52, 1 (March 1980), 33-49.
- “The ‘Author’ of Franklin’s Autobiography,” Early American Literature, 16, 3 (Winter 1981/82), 257-269.
- “Raging Joys, Sublime Violations: The Vietnam War in the Fiction of Chandler Brossard,” Review of Contemporary Fiction, 7, 1 (Spring 1987), 166-175.
- “Alabama at Gettysburg,” Alabama Heritage, No. 10 (Fall 1988), 16-31.
- “The Good Women of Saigon: The Work of Cultural Revision in Gloria Emerson’s Winners and Losers and Frances Fitzgerald’s Fire in the Lake,” Genre, 21 (Winter 1988) 523-534.
- “The Magical Realism of Mary Ward Brown,” Alabama English, 2, 1 (Spring 1990), 59-67.
- “Re-Writing America: Literature as Cultural Revision in the New Vietnam Fiction,” America Rediscovered: Critical Essays on Literature and Film of the Vietnam War, ed. Owen W. Gilman, Jr., and Lorrie Smith (New York: Garland, 1990), 3-9.
- “The Red Badge of Courage: Henry Fleming’s Courage in its Contexts,” CLIO, 20, 3 (Spring 1991), 235-251.
- “Bad Business: Vietnam in Recent Mass-Market Fiction,” College English, 54, 1 (January 1992), 64-75.
- “’The first production of the kind, in the South’: A Backwoods Literary Incognito and His Attempt at the Great American Novel,” Southern Literary Journal, 24, 2 (Spring 1992), 106-24.
- “South Pacific and American Remembering; or, ‘Josh, We’re Going to Buy This Son of a Bitch!’,” Journal of American Studies, 27, 2 (August 1994), 207-22.
- “Remembering Wendell Willkie’s One World,” Canadian Review of American Studies, 24, 2 (Spring 1994), 87-104.
- “The Story of Johnny Mack Brown,” Alabama Heritage, No. 38 (Fall 1995), 14-23.
- “Just Like in the Movies: Richard Nixon and Patton,” Georgia Review, 49, 2 (Fall 1995), 567-76.
- “Mr. Roberts and American Remembering; or, Why Major Major Major Major Looks Like Henry Fonda,” Journal of American Studies, 30, 1 (April 1996), 45-64.
- “Remembering The Best Years of Our Lives,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 72, 4 (Autumn 1996), 589-604.
- “The Last Huey,” Mythosphere, 1, 1 (1998), 51-64. Rpt. The Vietnam War and Postmodernity, ed. Michael Bibby (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 3-16.
- “Making a Production Out of It: Victory at Sea and American Remembering,” Prospects, Vol. 22 (1997), 521-34.
- “Satire in the Territories: Literature and the Art of Political Payback in an Early Alabama Classic,” Southern Literary Journal, 30, 1 (Fall 1997), 1-12.
- “The Good War and the Great SNAFU,” Georgia Review, 52, 1 (Spring 1998), 62-84.
- “A.B. Meek’s Great American Epic Poem of 1855: The Curious Career of The Red Eagle,” Mississippi Quarterly, 51, 3 (Spring 1998), 275-90.
- “Situation Report: American Writing about the Vietnam War” and “The Writings of the Vietnam War in the Classroom,” The Vietnam War: Its History, Literature and Music (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1998), 154-63, 193-94.
- “Ted Turner et al. at Gettysburg: or, Re-Enactors in the Attic,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 75, 3 (Summer 1999), 488-503. Abstracted for Chronicle of Higher Education daily web supplement, July 14, 1999.
- “Le Vietnam, tragedie americaine,” Magazine Litteraire, No. 378 (July-August 1999), 95-97.
- “Solatium,”Michigan Quarterly Review, 40, 4 (Fall 2001), 703-712. Rpt. Pushcart Prize XXVII (Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 2003), 142-51.
- “Calley’s Ghost,”Virginia Quarterly Review, 79, 1 (Winter 2003), 30-50. 2003 Notable Essay in Best American Essays.
- “Yankee Interloper and Native Son: Carl Carmer and Clarence Cason,” Southern Cultures (Spring 2003), 18-35.
- “The Lost Battalion of the Ia Drang.” Alabama Heritage No. 68 (Spring 2003), 18-33.
- “Portrait of the Historian as Literary Gentleman-Amateur,” Pickett’s History of Alabama (Montgomery: River City Press, 2003), vi-xi.
- “Viet Pulp,” War, Literature & the Arts, 14, 1&2 (2002), 246-59.
- “Enlarging the Vietnam Canon: Sigrid Nunez’s For Rouenna,” Michigan Quarterly Review (Fall 2004), 705-719.
- “Mustapha Rub-a-Dub Keli Khan and Other Famous Early American Mahometans,” Writing Race Across the Atlantic World, Medieval to Modern (New York: Palgrave Press, 2005), 171-86.
- “Caroline Lee Hentz’s Long Journey,”Alabama Heritage, No. 73 (Winter 2005), 24-31.
- “Mythopoeic Justice: Democracy and the Death of Edgar Allan Poe,” Midwest Quarterly, 46, 3 (Spring 2005), 252-67.
- “Law Poems/Language Poems,” Legal Studies Forum, 29, 1 (2005), 35-38.
- “What I Learned in the Green Machine,” Vietnam (October 2005), 58-62.
- “Harry Toulmin and Henry Hitchcock: Pioneering Jurists of the Alabama Frontier,” Alabama Heritage, No. 81 (Summer 2006), 18-25.
- “King August: August Wilson in His Time,” Michigan Quarterly Review, 45, 4 (Fall 2006), 575-97.
- “Fort Morality,” Military History (December 2006), 56-61.
- “Antidisestablishmentarianism,” Dalhousie Review, 87, 1 (Spring 2007), 25-42.
- “MacArthur, Eisenhower, and the War of the Generals for the Mid-20th Century Presidency,” Military History (July/August 2007), 62-69.
- “The Invisible ARVN,” War, Literature, and the Arts, 18, 1&2 (2007), 307-17.
- “Ruby Pickens Tartt: Citizen of the World,” with Elizabeth Buckalew, Alabama Heritage, No. 87 (Winter 2008), 20-27.
- “Introduction” to Re-Writing America, rpt. Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 254 (Detroit: Gale, 2008), 181-87.
- “Preface,” Nicole Willey, Creating a New Ideal of Masculinity for American Men: the Achievement of Sentimental Women Novelists of the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2008), i-vii.
- “China Magic,” Michigan Quarterly Review, 47, 2 (Spring 2008), 151-65.
- “Re-Reading William Faulkner’s The Bear, On Salary.” Midwest Quarterly, 50, 2 (Winter 2009), 120-36.
- “America’s Fairy Tale,” Fairy Tale Review (White Issue), 19-30.
- “Thirty Years after the Fall of Saigon: the Archaeologies,” Thirty Years After: the Vietnam War in American Film and Literature, ed. Mark Heberle. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009, 10-27.
- “Remembering On the Beach,” War, Literature & the Arts, 21 (2009), 370-82.
- “What Kurt Vonnegut Saw in World War II that Made Him Insane,” Michigan Quarterly Review, 49, 1 (Winter 2010), 106-19.
- “History and Memory in John Singer’s Sargent’s Great War Paintings,”Dalhousie Review. 90, 2 (Summer 2010), 185-97.
- “Introduction,” Charles Coleman, Sergeant Back Again. New York: Harper & Row, 1980; rpt. PTSD Press, 2010.
- “What Lady Butler Knew,” Military History, (August/September 2011), 58-63.
- “The Two Ernestos,” Dalhousie Review, 91, 2 (Summer 2011), 205-309.
- “The Photographers and the Living City/Los Fotografos y la Ciudad Viva,” text to photo-volume, Side by Sid/Lado a Lado, by Chip Cooper and Nestor Marti (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012).
- “Testaments of Youth,” Critical Insights: War, ed. Alex T. Vernon (Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2012), 89-105.
- “Mambises in Whiteface: U.S. Representations of Revolutionary Freedom Fighters in the 1895-98 War of Cuban Independence. “ American Studies, 52, 2 (2013), 89-101.
- “Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Long Journey out of War,” War, Literature and the Arts, 24 (2012), 1-13.
- “Introduction,” Race and Displacement, ed. Maha Marouan and Merinda Simmons (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013), 1-6.
- “The Great Party-Crasher: Mrs. Dalloway, The Great Gatsby, and the Cultures of Great War Memory,” War, Literature and the Arts, 25 (2013), 1-12.
- “In Search of the Great American Political Novel of the Vietnam War,” forthcoming in The Political Novel, ed. Mark Levene, Salem Press.
- “This Way to the Fuhrerbunker: Gertrud Kolmar Strasse, Berlin, Mitte, 2012,” forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review