Dr. Edward A. Shannon

Associate Professor

Educational Background: Ph.D. English. Dec. 1995, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro , NC . Major Field: Twentieth Century American Literature

Minor Fields: American Literature before 1900, Twentieth Century British Literature

MA. Literature in English. May 1990, North Carolina State University, Raleigh , NC . Master's Thesis Creative Writing, Fiction

B.A. Communications. May 1985, Ramapo College of NJ, Mahwah , NJ.

Areas of Specialization : American literature, especially nineteenth and twentieth century fiction.

Courses Regularly Taught: Survey of American Literature I and II, American Romanticism for the literature major, American Crime Fiction and Film and Comics and American Culture for American Studies, and American Gothic for MALS. I have also been involved in the Ireland Study Abroad program.

Scholarship: Recently, I have been writing about the life and work of Woody Guthrie. I've also done conference presentations or published articles on detective fiction, comic books and comic strips, and other topics. Right now I am working on an essay about the autobiographical comics of Robert Crumb and an extended research project involving Woody Guthrie's great song, “This Land is Your Land.”

Points of interest: I teach American literature and American Studies here at Ramapo; I have also been active in the MALS program. In the past, I have also taught writing. My continuing interests in research tends to be those corners of literary studies that overlap with popular culture, so I enjoy writing about and teaching comic strips, American folk music, and detective fiction.