William Scott Simkins

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Literature, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Aug. 2006. Emphasis on 20th-century American and British Literature.

Dissertation: John Steinbeck's Populist Aesthetic. Reevaluation of Steinbeck's work in light of his wish to be both politically engaged and rhetorically disinterested.

M.A. in Literature, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, Fall 1990. Emphasis on English and American Literature. Thesis: Steinbeck the Writer-Knight: Social and Moral Responsibilities of a Writer.

B.A. in English, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA, Spring 1986. Fields of study: English, Journalism, and French.

EMPLOYMENT

Instructor, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, 8/01-present. Teach Freshman composition sequence, World Literature sequence, Business Writing, and Early American Literature.

Instructor, University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, 8/99-7/01. Taught Freshman English Sequence, Early American Literature, Modern American Literature, Modern British & American Literature, and Twentieth-Century Literatures in English.

Teaching Assistant and Adjunct Instructor, University of Southern Mississippi, 8/94-8/99. Taught ESL students, took part in Portfolio Assessment Workshop and Computer-Assisted Instruction. Chosen to be observed by new teaching assistants. Awarded fourth-year assistantship. Evaluated essays for USM's Police Corps.

Freshman Composition Freshman Research World Literature

Business Writing American Literature I American Literature II

Museum Interpreter, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA, 8/86-10/93. Taught historical facts and theories; researched 17th-20th-century Virginian and southern American history; planned tours and trained employees.

PUBLICATIONS

Entries on “About Ed Ricketts,” The Harvest Gypsies, A Russian Journal, and others for A Steinbeck Encyclopedia (Brian Railsback and Mike Meyer, eds., Greenwood P.), 2006

Review of Suzanne K. Sherman's Comedies Useful and Charles Watson's History of Southern Drama for Theatre Survey. May 1999.

"Puritan, Poet, and Political Radical" (article on Milton in Colonial America) published in The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter, May 1993.

"Bassett Hall Redux" (article on redesign of Rockefeller tour) published in The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter, August 1991.

"Montpelier and the Colonial Renaissance" (article on interpretation of home of James Madison) published in The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter, May 1990.

CONFERENCES

"Violence, Race, and Fear in Yokomitsu Riichi’s Shanghai” --to be read at the University of West Georgia’s “Fear and Awe: The 21st Annual International Literature Conference,” Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 2006.
“Struggling on Two Fronts, Senegalese Patriarchy and French Colonialism: The Undaunted Women of Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood.”--read at Association for Core Texts and Courses Conference, Chicago, April 2006.

"Resisting Women and Defeated Men in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Sembčne Ousmane's God's Bits of Wood"--read at Steinbeck and His Contemporaries Conference, Sun Valley, Idaho, March 2006.

"Remythologizing America: John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent"--Read for panel "The Worlds of Winter" at the Fifth International Steinbeck Conference, Hofstra University, Long Island, New York, March 2002.

Black Elk Speaks as Postmodern Text: Sioux Culture Challenging the Hegemony of Western Science" -- for panel "Challenging Translation: Translating Challenges" read at March 1998 conference of the American Comparative Literature Association at the University of Texas at Austin.

"Protecting the 'Minimum Nucleus of Security.'"--read at April 1997 Beyond Borders Conference at Simmons College, Boston.

"The Consequences of Listening in Othello."--read April 1996 at Graduate Society of Baylor University's Fifth Annual Conference on Literature and Language.

"Steinbeck, Joseph Campbell, and Myth in To A God Unknown."--read at Jan. 1996 conference of Mississippi Philological Association.