Tim Ryan (academic)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Timothy Andrew Ryan (b. 1971) is a British-born scholar of American literature and culture.

Born in Bath, England, Tim Ryan took his B.A. in American Studies at the University of Reading but has spent much of his subsequent academic career in the US, receiving his Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of Nevada, Reno. He briefly taught in the American Studies department at King’s College London (2004-2006) and has served as Assistant Professor of African American Literature at Northern Illinois University since 2007. He is married to the Shakespearean scholar and textual editor, Dee Anna Phares.^[1].

Ryan’s critical work focuses upon conversations “between texts, across disciplines, and over racial boundaries.”^[2] His first book, Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind explores a variety of modern cultural dialogues about US slavery—dialogues between works, between black and white writers, and between historians and authors.

Calls and Responses won the Jules and Frances Landry Award for 2008.

It includes analyses of the following books, both fiction and non-fiction: Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell, Black Thunder (1936) by Arna Bontemps, American Negro Slave Revolts (1943) by Herbert Aptheker, The Red Cock Crows (1944) by Frances Gaither, The Foxes of Harrow (1946) by Frank Yerby, Mandingo (1957) by Kyle Onstott, Slavery: A Problem in American Intellectual and Institutional Life (1959) by Stanley Elkins, Jubilee (1966) by Margaret Walker, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) by William Styron, Roots (1976) by Alex Haley, Flight to Canada (1976) by Ishmael Reed, Kindred (1979) by Octavia Butler, Dessa Rose (1986) by Sherley Anne Williams, Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison, Property (2003) by Valerie Martin, and The Known World (2003) by Edward P. Jones ^[3]

Ryan is currently working on his second book, a comparative study of William Faulkner’s fiction and the Delta Blues. He has also published articles in such journals as Mississippi Quarterly and the Journal of American Culture, and he has presented scholarship at conferences on both sides of the Atlantic.

References

1. Northern Today, Northern Illinois University, September 4 2007
2. Northern Today, Northern Illinois University, September 4 2007
3. Tim A. Ryan, Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2008.

External Links

Profile at Northern Today, September 4, 2007 on Northern Illinois University website: [1]

Louisiana State University Press page on Calls and Responses: [2]