Faculty and Staff Biographies

A specialist in 19th- and early 20th-century American literature, Jeremy Wells is the author of Romances of the White Man’s Burden: Race, Empire, and the Plantation in American Literature, 1880-1936 (Vanderbilt U.P., 2011). He has published articles on such figures as Kate Chopin and Booker T. Washington and such topics as university-high school English teacher collaboration. An essay on the image of Jimi Hendrix in heavy metal reflects his interest in the subject of race and popular music, and his current research focuses on the representation of slave song in U.S. print culture from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. He also recently co-edited with Amy Clukey (U. of Louisville) a special issue of the journal Global South titled "Plantation Modernity." 

As a teacher Dr. Wells enjoys offering courses on literary criticism, ethnic American literatures, William Faulkner, and Mark Twain, among other topics. He has also developed a course titled "Zombies, Cyborgs, and Posthumanity," which he now offers regularly. A native of Huntsville, Alabama who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, he appreciates the fact that New Albany is located halfway between two of the places he knows best. A student of U.S. literary regionalism, he also loves discussing with IUS students “Kentuckiana,” a space they know better than he, and he works to include texts focused on the region in his American literature courses.