Contact: Phil Hearn
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State literary scholar Noel Polk is a 2005 Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Lodz, Poland.
The English professor and editor of the university-based Mississippi Quarterly left Wednesday [April 27] for the Eastern European institution, where he will lecture for five weeks on the works of famed Mississippi writers William Faulkner and Eudora Welty.
Named for the long-serving U.S. senator from Arkansas, William J. Fulbright, the scholars program was created by Congress in 1946 to support academic work and study abroad by Americans, as well as to enable overseas students and educators to do the same here.
Polk was selected for the 2005 Fulbright Senior Specialists Program, which provides short-term experiences ranging from two to six weeks.
"Noel is a Southern literature scholar whose reputation is worldwide, so his having a Fulbright to lecture in Poland is a well-deserved honor," said department colleague Nancy Hargrove, a William L. Giles Distinguished Professor.
MSU's Fulbright campus adviser, Hargrove recently received a Fulbright Distinguished Chair Award to teach 20th century American literature at the University of Vienna, Austria.
In addition, two other faculty members, associate professor of human science Phyllis Bell Miller and assistant professor of religion Eve Mullen, have been selected for 2005-06 Fulbright programs to Bulgaria and Indonesia, respectively.
"As editor of The Mississippi Quarterly and as a respected scholar on the works of Faulkner and Welty, Dr. Polk has brought national and international recognition to our department and to MSU," said English department head Rich Raymond.
"He also has shared his expertise with local libraries and schools, signaling the importance of the humanities in forming campus-community partnerships," Raymond said. Observing that Polk came to MSU last fall after 27 years at the University of Southern Mississippi, he added, "We're delighted Dr. Polk has joined our department."
A specialist in American fiction, Polk has published and lectured widely in this country, Europe, Japan and the former Soviet Union on the works of Faulkner and Welty. He currently is in the process of editing Faulkner's works for three publishers, Library of America, Random House and Vintage International. Also, he recently edited a new edition of Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men" for Harcourt Brace, another major publishing house.
Polk's more than 25 book publications include "Children of the Dark House: Text and Context in Faulkner" (1996); "Eudora Welty: A Bibliography of Her Work" (1993); and "Outside the Southern Myth" (1997).
Founded in 1948 and housed in the English department, the Mississippi Quarterly that Polk edits is a scholarly journal of Southern culture, past and present. The journal is published by MSU's College of Arts and Sciences.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, contact Dr. Raymond at (662) 325-3606 or rraymond@english.msstate.edu; or Dr. Hargrove at 325-2333 or ndh1@ra.msstate.edu.