Department of English Language and Literature
Directory
Tara Powell
Title: | Associate Professor |
Department: | English Language and Literature College of Arts and Sciences |
Email: | tfpowell@mailbox.sc.edu |
Phone: | 803-777-4203 |
Resources: | English Language and Literature |
Education
PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004
MA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999
BA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997
Areas of Specialization
• 20th-Century American Literature
• Southern Literature
• Poetry
Recently Taught Courses
ENGL 427 Southern Literature
ENGL 429s Carolina Novelists
ENGL 752 Modern American Novel
ENGL 759 Southern Literature since 1900
Current Research Projects
Works-in-progress include a book manuscript examining late twentieth-century southern verse memoirs by James Applewhite, Yusef Komunyakaa, Nikky Finney, John Lane, and others; a chapbook of poems about the Waldensian diaspora in Europe, North Carolina, and Uruguay; and a study of Doris Betts's uncollected short fiction.
Selected Publications
BOOKS
• Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Literature and Foodways. Co-edited with David A. Davis. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.
• The Intellectual in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012.
• Physical Science. A chapbook of poems. Lexington, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2010.
SELECTED ESSAYS
• "'You Taste of America': Talladega Nights, Deliverance, and Southern Studies." Southerners on Film: Essays on Hollywood Portrayals Since the 1970s. Ed. Andrew B. Leiter. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2011. 217-229.
• "Percival Everett: Erasure." Still in Print: The Southern Novel Today. Ed. Jan Nordby-Gretlund. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina
Press, 2010. 73-87.
• "How Michael Chitwood Minds the South." Iron Mountain Review. 24 (2008): 23-29.
• "Beyond the Wallpaper: Crossroads of Region, Gender, and Intellectual Life in the
Fiction of Doris Betts and Gail Godwin." South Atlantic Review. 72.3 (2007): 1-16.
SELECTED POETRY ONLINE
• "Coiffure," "Drinking with the poets on the dock," and "Watching Deliverance with
My Students." Weber Studies. 23.3 (2007): 96-98.
• "Pond," "Growing Season," "Laundry," "Akhmatova, Collected in Translation," "The Tattered
Last of the Hurricane," and "Posture for Prayer." North Carolina Poet of the Week,
October 2-8, 2006. North Carolina Arts Council.
• "Tempest Following Fortunes." Amarillo Bay. 6.2 (2004).
• "Daffodils Had Just Begun Nodding," "Motoring Home Down the Canal, I Heard the NPR
Astronomer Claim," "Valentine," "Wardrobe," and "Woman in Hibernation." Poets Under
30 Feature. storySouth: the best from new south writers. Winter 2004.
Recent Presentations
• "Kissing O'Connor's Skeleton." Flannery O'Connor Session. 10/2013 Rocky Mountain MLA
Conference. Vancouver, WA.
• "A Wildness for the World: The Short Fiction of Doris Betts." Special Session on Doris
Betts. 11/2012 South Atlantic MLA. Raleigh, NC.
• "Closing the Southern Sublime: A Liturgy of Trees in the Poetry of John Lane." Association
for the Study of Literature and Environment. 11/2011 South Atlantic MLA. Atlanta,
GA.
• "Responding to History and Women, Culture and Faith: Selected Writings of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese." 7/2011 St. George Tucker Society for Southern Studies. Augusta, GA.
• "'Nothing Can Gloss / Over Barbecue Sauce': Foodways, Memory, and Race in Contemporary
Southern Poetry." Eating in the Kitchen: Race, Foodways, and Southern Literature Special
Session.
• 4/2010 Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference. New Orleans, LA.
Other Information
• Poetry Editorial Board Member for Weber: The Contemporary West (2007-present)
• South Atlantic Modern Language Association Executive Committee Member (2014 -
2016)
• Society for the Study of Southern Literature: Executive Council (2013 - 2015);
Program Committee Member (2012 conference); American Literature Association regular
session coordinator (2008 - 2014); RMMLA affiliate session coordinator (2010 - 2014)
• American Waldensian Society Board of Directors (2011-present)
• Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Executive Board: President (2015);
Delegate-at-Large (2009 - 2011); Graduate Student Delegate (2004 - 2005)
• Chair, Southern Writers Speaker Series. Co-sponsored by the Friends of the Richland
County Public Library and the USC Institute for Southern Studies (2007, 2008, 2010,
2012)