Ed Madden

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Ed Madden is a poet, political activist, and associate professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of South Carolina. He grew up in Newport, AR, got his B.A. from nearby Harding University, and received his Ph.D. in literature from the University of Texas, Austin.

[edit] Professor and Poet

Dr. Madden is president of the American Conference of Irish Studies, Southern Region. He has written several critical articles on modern British and Irish poetry and has completed a book on representations of Tiresian liminality in modernist poetry (forthcoming from Fairleigh-Dickinson University Press). He co-edited an anthology of essays and poems on male experience, The Emergence of Man into the 21st Century, and wrote "An Open Letter to My Christian Friends," which appears in the English composition textbook Everything's an Argument.

In addition to his literary criticism, he also publishes on issues involving sexuality and spirituality. He has published "Gospels of Inversion: Literature, Scripture, Sexology" in a collection of essays entitled Divine Aporia: Postmodern Conversation About the Other (edited by John C. Hawley). Another intervention in the intersection of religion, literature, and sex came in the essay "'The Well of Loneliness', or the Gospel According to Radclyffe Hall," published in Reclaiming the Sacred: The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture (edited by Raymond-Jean Frontain).

Dr. Madden has been a South Carolina Academy of Authors fellow in poetry twice. He has been writer in residence at the Riverbanks Botanical Gardens in Columbia, SC, and he also worked as writer in residence at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, SC as part of the state's African-American Heritage Corridor project. He also works with the SC Poetry Initiative and has been named a 2006 Artist-in-Residence by the SC State Parks.

[edit] Activist

Dr. Madden has been Secretary, Vice President, and President of the SC Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement. He has written numerous editorials advocating gay liberation in local and national newspapers. He is also the executive producer of Rainbow Radio: The REAL Gay Agenda, a South Carolina-based, gay-themed radio talkshow that is broadcast Sundays at 10 a.m. in Columbia, SC on Air America, WOIC-AM 1230.

His partner is Bert Easter, President of the S.C. Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement. They live in Columbia, SC near the SC Gay and Lesbian Community Center, now called the Harriet Hancock Community Center, which they both serve as board members.