Professor of Literature

Year Joined RCNJ: 1997

Contact Information

• Phone: (201) 684-7425
• Email: eshannon@ramapo.edu
• Office: B-207
• Office Hours: MR 9:00-9:30 am, 2:00-3:00 pm
• Department Website

Education:

• B.A., Ramapo College of New Jersey
• M.A., North Carolina State University
• Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Courses Offered:

For the Literature major:

• Contemporary American Literature
• Comic American Novel
• 20th Century American Novel
• Survey of American Literature I & II
• Major Authors: Mark Twain

For the American Studies major:

• American Crime Fiction and Film
• Comics and American Culture

For the Mals Graduate Program:

• American Gothic: The Literacy Tradition
• American Folk: The Voice of the People in American Literature

Teaching Interests:

• American Literature especially twentieth century fiction

Research Interests:

• Literary studies that overlap with popular culture
• American folk music
• Detective Fiction

Scholarly Activity:

• “Becky Thatcher’s Literary Half-life: Appropriating Mark Twain’s Good Girl.”Adaptation, apad030, https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apad030. 15 September 2023.
• “’Don’t Call Me Woody’: The Punk Compassion and Folk Rebellion of Joe Strummer and Woody Guthrie.” Punk Rock Warlord: The Life and Work of Joe Strummer. Eds. Barry J. Faulk and Brady Harrison. Surrey, England: Ashgate Books, 2013.

• “Shameful, Impure Art: Robert Crumb’s Autobiographical Comics and the Confessional Poets.” Biography 35.4 (Fall 2013).
• “Art and Commerce in the Classroom.” Teaching Comics and Graphic Narratives. Ed. Lan Dong. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. 2012.
• “Something Black in the American Psyche: Formal Innovation and Freudian Imagery in the Comics of Winsor McCay and Robert Crumb.” The Canadian Review of American Studies. July 2010.
• “Our Clothes are a Lie Disguise and Christian Typology in Pudd’nhead Wilson” Mark Twain Annual.2009.
• “Tom Ripley.” Student’s Companion to American Literary Characters, Facts on File. 2007.
• “Talkin’ World Revolution: Woody Guthrie’s Seeds of Man as Socialist Parable.” Intersecting Paths: Continuing Legacy of Old Southwestern Humor. Ed. Ed Piacentino, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP. 2006
• “Where was the sex?’: Fetishism and Dirty Minds in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.” Modern Language Studies. 34.1, Spring 2005.