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About

Dr. Taylor Hagood is Professor of American Literature at �鶹Ů��. He was a Fulbright Professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany (2009–2010) and �鶹Ů�� Lifelong Learning Society Distinguished Professor of Arts and Letters (2013–2014). A scholar, teacher, and writer of wide-ranging interests and expertise, Professor Hagood teaches courses both in person and online and has been involved in the digital humanities. His scholarship spans American literature, Southern literature, science fiction and fantasy, horror, African American literature, biography, true crime, literary criticism, and creative writing. He is also an in-demand speaker regionally, nationally, and internationally.

Professor Hagood's scholarship and teaching include science fiction and fantasy, with particular emphasis on fantasy and horror. He has presented papers at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts and incorporates speculative fiction into his teaching through works such as Octavia Butler's Kindred, Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars, and the comic series Preacher. His work on speculative fiction includes a chapter on zombies and vampires in True Blood and The Goon comics in the co-edited collection Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture (with Eric Gary Anderson and Daniel Cross Turner, LSU Press, 2015); a chapter on Jeremy Love's Bayou in Redrawing the Historical "Past": History, Memory, and Multiethnic Graphic Novels, edited by Martha J. Cutter and Cathy J. Schlund-Vials; and scholarship on horror comics including Bayou, The Goon, and The Walking Dead, as well as the history and affect of Frankenstein monster masks.

Professor Hagood is one of the major scholars in Faulkner studies. He held the Francis Bell McCool Dissertation Fellowship in Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi (2004–2005) and served the William Faulkner Society as Representative-at-Large (2009–2012), Vice President (2015–2018), and President (2018–2021). He worked as an editor for the NEH-funded Digital Yoknapatawpha Project, serves on the Editorial Board of The Faulkner Journal, and wrote the annual review of Faulkner scholarship in American Literary Scholarship (Duke University Press) from 2018–2021. His publications include numerous essays, the edited collection Critical Insights: The Sound and the Fury (2014), and the books Faulkner's Imperialism: Space, Place, and the Materiality of Myth, Following Faulkner: The Critical Response to Yoknapatawpha's Architect, and Faulkner, Writer of Disability, which received the for Best Book in Southern Literary Studies.

His work on Faulkner also intersects with Southern Studies. He co-edited the H Southern Lit listserv from 2010–2014, served on the Executive Council of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature (2013–2016), and co-edited two influential collections with Louisiana State University Press: Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture (2015) and Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies (2020).

Beyond these specializations, Professor Hagood has published widely in African American studies, including numerous articles and the book Secrecy, Magic, and the One-Act Plays of Harlem Renaissance Women Writers (2010). His long involvement with the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters Ph.D. Program in Comparative Studies has fostered interdisciplinary and comparative research that increasingly bridges academic scholarship and public-facing writing.

His recent books include the biography/true-crime work Stringbean: The Life and Murder of a Country Music Legend (2024), the first full-length study of Grand Ole Opry performer David "Stringbean" Akeman and his 1973 murder, combining biography, music criticism, and investigative journalism. His second biography, Theodore Pratt: A Florida Writer's Life (2025), draws on the Theodore Pratt Papers in �鶹Ů��'s Special Collections to examine the life of the Florida novelist whose works include The Barefoot Mailman, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, and numerous fantasy and science fiction stories and novels. The biography also explores Pratt's friendships and correspondence with figures including Burt Reynolds, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, John D. MacDonald, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Professor Hagood continues to develop as a scholar, writer, and public intellectual. In 2024, he published a series of horror stories and more than a dozen poems in a variety of magazines. He is currently researching and writing an interdisciplinary theory, philosophy, and history of rurality. As a lecturer for general audiences, he speaks throughout South Florida and across the country on literature, art, music, culture, and history.

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Graduate Courses with Science Fiction and Fantasy Related Content

• The Thing in American Modernism
• Undead Souths
• Race, Gender, and Disability in American Literature
• Animals in American Literature

Science Fiction and Fantasy Related Books

Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture. Co-edited with Eric Gary Anderson and Daniel Cross Turner. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015 (issued in paperback edition 2022)

Science Fiction and Fantasy Related Articles

“Frankenstein Masks: Perpetuating the Monster Assemblage,” Afterlives of Frankenstein: Popular and Artistic Adaptations and Reimaginings, edited by Robert Lublin and Elizabeth Fay. London: Bloomsbury (forthcoming)

“Nostalgic Realism: Jeremy Love’s Bayou,” Redrawing the Historical “Past”: History, Memory, and Multiethnic Graphic Novels. Ed. Martha J. Cutter and Cathy J. Schlund-Vials. Athens: University of Georgia Press (2018): 41-60

Science Fiction and Fantasy Related Conference Papers

“On the Affect of Frankenstein Masks,” The 39th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts , Orlando, FL, March 2018

“‘They Came Now as Friends and Allies’: Reconciliation Romance and The Princess of Mars,” The 37th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, FL, March 2016

“Comic Strips—Hybridity— Pylon,” Faulkner and Print Culture: The 42nd Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference , University of Mississippi, July 2015

“Swampmonsters, Terror(ism), and Cartoon Capability in Bayou and Archer,” Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Conference , University of Georgia, April 2015

“Graphic (Un)Being: Swamping the Deleuzian Body Without Organs in Contemporary Comics (Swamp Thing, Swamp Preacher, and Bayou),” Modern Language Association Convention, Vancouver, Canada, January 2015

“Striking Back Black: Discourses of Headlessness in Charles W. Chesnutt’s ‘The Marked Tree,’” South Central Modern Language Association Convention, New Orleans, October 2013

“The Return of the Interred Oppressed: Zombie Roots and the Plantation Past in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing,” Southern American Studies Association Conference, Charleston, South Carolina, January 2013

“The Undead, Popular Culture, and Southern Figuration,” Modern Language Association Convention , Seattle, Washington, January 2012