Jim Murphy, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of English
Ph.D. University of Cincinnati, 2000.

Both the poetry writing and scholarship that I do are focused on American vernacular roots, with sources that run from jazz, blues, and rock 'n' roll, to film, to the visual arts.

Poems of mine have appeared in The Southern Review, Southern Humanities Review, Brooklyn Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Fine Madness, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, and in other journals, as well as in The Memphis Sun (Kent State University Press, 2000).  My new poetry book Heaven Overland is slated to be published in 2008 by Kennesaw State University Press. Scholarship includes writing on postmodern novelist Steve Erickson (Modern Fiction Studies), mid-20th Century American poet Robert Hayden (MELUS Journal) and contemporary Alabama poet Rodney Jones (Mississippi Quarterly).

Courses taught at UM include beginning and advanced creative writing workshops in poetry and prose, literature surveys of American poetry c. 1945-1970, and of the Literature of Northern California, a sophomore survey of literary undergrounds, a major authors course on Whitman and Dickinson, introduction to the English major, a freshman composition course focusing on race and music in America, and a capstone course focusing on literary relations between Self and State.

I also serve as Director of the Montevallo Literary Festival, held on campus each spring, and as an editor in poetry for Red Mountain Review, a Birmingham-based literary journal (www.redmountainreview.net).

Vita

Office: 200A Comer Hall
Office tel.: 205.665.6416
Office fax: 205.665.6422
murphyj@montevallo.edu