In Memoriam: Professor Thomas Fredrick Haddox, May 23, 1972 – October 13, 2024
The Department of English was stunned this week by the sudden death of our colleague and friend Dr. Tom Haddox, who suffered a fatal accident last Sunday, October 13, while running in a local park.
Dr. Haddox grew up in Semmes, Alabama, and obtained his BA at Tulane University. From 1994 to 1996 he studied at the University of Kent (Canterbury, England) where he received a double MA degree in Modern Literature and in European and Comparative Literature. He began his doctoral study in American literature at Vanderbilt in 1996, receiving his PhD in 2000. He began as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2001, was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2007, and promoted to full professor in 2013.
Dr. Haddox was an accomplished and beloved professor who, over his 23 years’ service at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, taught a wide range of courses, both undergraduate and graduate, for the Department of English. The list includes lower and upper division classes and graduate seminars in modern American literature, Southern literature, literary theory, and narrative studies, as well as courses dedicated to such authors as Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, and William Faulkner. In the area of graduate student mentoring, his record is exemplary – he directed nine doctoral dissertations and seven MA theses, as well as serving as a reader on many other graduate committees. His dedication to his students’ educational progress and intellectual development was unshakeable.
Dr. Haddox published widely in American literature and had earned an international reputation as a leading scholar of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction. His two monographs, Fears and Fascinations: Representing Catholicism in the American South (Fordham UP, 2005) and Hard Sayings: The Rhetoric of Christian Orthodoxy in Late Modern Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2013) investigated the connections between religion and literature. He also co-edited with Allen Dunn (former head of English) an essay collection entitled The Limits of Literary Historicism (UT Press, 2011). In the same year, he was the guest editor for a special issue of The Southern Quarterly on the theme of “The South and the Sublime.”
His journal articles and essays embody the same exemplary scholarly and critical energies he brought to his book-length studies. Recent publications include two journal articles, “’Lingering’ and ‘Incurable’: Flannery O’Connor’s Humor and the Game of Status in ‘Good Country People’” in Women’s Studies and “Diachronicity, Episodicity, and the Aesthetics of Historicism” in Philosophy and Literature. His scholarship consistently merged insightful theoretical perspectives with sensitive, nuanced readings of American literature.
It is difficult to exaggerate the degree to which Tom Haddox was liked, admired, and respected in the Department of English and throughout the University of Tennessee. A talented and judicious administrator, he served both as Director of Graduate Studies and as Associate Head of English. At faculty meetings, Tom’s ability to sum up complex or sensitive matters and gently point the way forward made him a trusted guiding voice in the department. For UT faculty and staff, and for his students past and present, the loss of Tom Haddox leaves an empty space that will be impossible to fill.