New Faculty Publications

The Battles of Texas: Adjuncts, Composition, and Culture Wars at UT Austin by Nate Kreuter and Mark Garrett Longaker (Penn State University Press, Jan. 2025)

Dr. Kreuter’s new book, co-written with Mark Garrett Longaker, utilizes university records, newspaper archives, and contemporary interviews to illustrate the creation and history of UT Austin’s writing program. With its mass firing of lecturers in 1985, the inclusion of “multicultural” content, and the separation of the writing program from the English Department in 1992, UT Austin’s writing program has been in the public eye since its creation. Despite public scrutiny, administrators remained vigilant and resisted the economic and political forces that wished to see the writing program come to an end. This microhistory allows the authors to highlight the parallels between the events in the 1980s and the ongoing political and labour issues in today’s academic climate--and what strategies  university faculty, staff, and students can undertake to survive this climate.

These Late Eclipses by Andrew Zawacki (Verge, due 2025)

These Late Eclipses is Andrew Zawacki’s most recent poetry book will be released later this year through Verge. You can read excerpts here, at POSIT: A Journal of Literature and Art.

The Man Who Came Home: The Life and Fiction of Ernest Gaines by John Wharton Lowe (Library of America, upcoming).

The world mourned the passing of Ernest J. Gaines on 5 November 2019. Best known for his 1993 novel, A Lesson Before Dying, Gaines was a prolific writer with 10 published novels. Among his many achievements, Gaines was a MacArthur Foundation fellow and was awarded the National Humanities Medal. 

This prolific author was the subject of UGA’s own John Wharton Lowe, who died in August 2023. Now, the biography is being continued by Veronica Makowsky, Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. Lowe’s biography examines Gaines’ use of dialect and language as a means of communication and marker of class, race, and gender. You can read excerpts here.