Office: Keezell 410
Phone: 540-568-3566
Email: cashjw@jmu.edu
Office Hours: Fall 2009 - MW 1:00-2:00

Courses: Fall 2009
ENG 302 Special Topics in Literature: Styron, O'Connor and Percy, MW 2:30-3:45

Specialties: Larry Brown, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, William Styron, Southern Literature in general

Education: 1983 Ph.D. University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677; Major: English; elected to Sigma Tau Delta and Phi Kappa Phi
1967 M.A. Madison College, Harrisonburg, VA 22807; Major: English
1959 B.A. Madison College, Harrisonburg, VA Major: English; elected to Sigma Phi Lambda and Kappa Delta Pi

Awards:
Fall 2006 and Spring 2007: Sabbatical leave granted by JMU for work on a biography of Mississippi novelist, Larry Brown.

August 2005: Invited participant on a series of programs, “The Great Pretender: Lupus and the Brain,” in the public radio series, “The Infinite Mind,” originating in Cambridge, MA. I discuss the impact of lupus on Flannery O’Connor.

October 2005: Lecture, “Flannery O’Connor: Georgia’s Peacock” at a meeting of The Wednesday Club, Danville, Virginia

February 2005: Keynote speaker at a Flannery O’Connor Week Celebration, Dalton State College, Dalton, Georgia

Fall 2004: Named to the Editorial Board of Studies in American Culture

Spring-Summer 2004 and 2005: Member of Adjudication Panels for annual fiction awards given by the Library of Virginia.

Fall 2003: Named to the Editorial Board of The Flannery O’Connor Review

Spring 2003: Nominated for the Hugh C. Holman Award in Southern Literature for Flannery O'Connor, A Life

Spring 2003; repeated December 2003: Interview-Participant Discussing Flannery O’Connor, A Life on the Virginia Public Television Program, “With Good Reason”

Spring 2003: Invited participant at the Virginia Festival of The Book

Fall 2002: Invited participant at The Southern Festival of the Book, Nashville, TN

Publications:
BOOK:
LARRY BROWN AND THE BLUE-COLLAR SOUTH, ed. with Keith  Perry.  Jackson:  U P of Mississippi, 2008.  Contributed two essays.

Flannery O'Connor, A Life. Knoxville, U Tenn P, 2002.

ARTICLES, REVIEWS, AND MISCELLANEOUS:
Larry Brown’s Literary Apprenticeship—1980-1988.”  STUDIES IN AMERICAN CULTURE 30.1 (October 2007): 95-128.

Review of A MIRACLE OF CATFISH.  By Larry Brown.  STUDIES IN AMERICAN CULTURE 30.1(October 2007): 162-165.


Review of Funeral Festivals in American, Rituals for the Living. By Jacqueline S. Thursby. Forthcoming in Studies in American Culture, Fall 2006.

Entry on Larry Brown, submitted and accepted for publication in the updated version of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. No publication date available.

Review of The Coal Tattoo. By Silas House. Studies in American Culture, Fall 2005.

“Flannery O’Connor, A Constant Devotion.” Flannery O’Connor’s Radical Reality. Ed. Jan Nordby Gretlund and Karl-Heinz Westarp. U South Carolina P, 2006.

“Larry Brown.” Dictionary of Literary Biography: 21st Century American Novelists. Ed. Lisa Abney and Suzanne Disheroon Green. NY, et. al: Thomas Gale, 2004: 24-33.

Dual Review of Flannery O’Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide To Criticism. By R. Neil Scott. Milledgeville: Timberlane Press, 2002; and Postmarked Milledgeville: A Guide to Flannery O’Connor’s Correspondence in Libraries and Archives. Compiled and Annotated by R. Neil Scott and Valarie Nye. Milledgeville: Flannery O’Connor Review, 2002. In Flannery O’Connor Review 2 (2003-2004): 105-106.

“A Closer Look: Jean W. Cash.” Interview with Robert Donohoo. Cheers! 10.3 (Fall/Winter 2003-2004): 4-5.

"Flannery O'Connor: A Simple but Creative Life." Appalachian Life August/September 2002: 37.

"Evangelical Fervor, Gothic Horror, and Redemption: Reflections of Flannery O'Connor in Larry Brown's Fiction." Flannery O'Connor Review 1 (2001-2002): 37-48.

WORKS IN PROGRESS:
Article on Larry Brown’s Fay for a collection of essays on 21st century Southern writers, planned by Jan Nordby Gretlund, of the University of Southern Denmark.

Authorized biography of Mississippi writer, Larry Brown (1951-2004); nine and a half chapters of a projected ten chapters currently in manuscript; some research, much revision still needed before submission.

Collection of essays on the life and work of Larry Brown; to be submitted this fall to the University Press of Mississippi for possible publication; editor and contributor.

Beginning work on an authorized biography of Mississippi writer, Larry Brown (1951-2004).

Presentations:
Chair of panel, “Flannery and Faulkner Conference,”  Milledgeville, GA, April 2008.

Chair of panel and presenter, “Larry Brown:  From Fireman to Literary Artist.”Annual meeting of the College English Association, St. Louis, March 2008.

“Larry Brown as Creative Writing Teacher:  ‘I gave it all I had.  That’s the only way I know how to do it.’”  Presented at the annual meeting of the PCAS/ACAS,  Jacksonville, FL, September 28, 2007.  Also participated on a panel of contributors to the 2007 edition of Studies in American Culture.

May 2007.  Chair of two panels at the ALA meeting in Boston:  a panel on Larry Brown, and a tribute to William Styron, which I organized and proposed.

“Teaching Larry Brown.”  Presented at The Fourteenth Oxford Conference for the Book,Oxford, MS, March 23, 2007.


October 2006, Presentation on connections between biography and fiction in the work of Larry Brown. To be presented at the Annual meeting of the PCAS/ACAS, Savannah, GA.

April 2006, attended a major O’Connor conference, “Flannery O’Connor and Other Georgia Writers,” at Georgia State College and University, Milledgeville. I introduced and led discussion of the movie version of her novel Wise Blood and served as invited chair of a panel on O’Connor and younger Southern writers.

April 2006, organized and chaired a graduate student panel on the importance of place in the works of contemporary Southern Writers for the annual meeting of the College English Association, San Antonio, Texas.

“Larry Brown and William Faulkner: A Shared Reverence of Rural Mississippi.” Presented at the annual meeting of the PCAS/ ACAS, Jacksonville, FL., October 2005.

Organizer and Panel chair for The Flannery O’Connor Society, “Teaching the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor to Today’s Secular Students.” Presented at the annual meeting of ALA, Boston, May 2005.

Brede House and Lamb House, Sussex: Creative Space for Crane and James.” Presented at the annual meeting of the CEA, Indianapolis, March 2005.

“Larry Brown’s Fay and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders: Unlikely Feminist Heroines.” Presented at the annual meeting Of the Philological Association of the Carolinas, Myrtle Beach, SC, March 2005.

“Combining Reality and Fiction: Gary Hawkins’s The Rough South of Larry Brown.” Presented at the annual meeting of the ACAS/PCAS, New Orleans, LA, September 23, 2004.

“Larry Brown: Voice of the Yeoman South.” Presented at the annual meeting of the CEA, Richmond, VA, April 2004.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Return to Milledgeville: Not the “End” but the “Beginning.” Presented at the annual meeting of SAMLA, Atlanta, GA, October 2003.

Chair of panel on O’Connor’s Friendships. Presented at “Revelations: Flannery O’Connor, the Visionary and the Vernacular,” An Interdisciplinary and Scholarly Conference, Milledgeville, GA, October 8-11, 2003.

"Flannery O'Connor as Mentor: 'passing on Caroline's advice.'" Presented at the annual meeting of the American Literature Association, Cambridge MA, May 24, 2003.

"Writing Flannery O'Connor, A Life: A Personal Odyssey": Presented at Virginia Military Institute (May 1, 2003); at the national meeting of the College English Association, St. Petersburg, FL (April 3, 2003); at the Virginia Festival of the Book, Charlottesville (March 22, 2003); at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, (March 12, 2003); as a lecture in the "Brown Bag Series," James Madison University (January 29, 2003), at Georgia State College and University, Milledgeville and at the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah (late October 2002), at the Southern Festival of the Book, Nashville (mid-October 2002), and at the Lost State Writers Conference, Greeneville, TN (September 2002).

"Flannery O'Connor as Communicant: A Constant Devotion." Presented at "Flannery O'Connor, Faith, Fiction, and Fact," Sandjberg, Denmark, July 4, 2002.

"Larry Brown: Humanity Overrides Race." Presented at the annual meeting of the Texas ACASW, Albuquerque, NM, February 16, 2002.

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