Martin Griffin
ADDRESS
Martin Griffin
Professor, Associate Head
19th Century and 20th Century American literature; popular literature; literature and politics
Working in the broad field of American literature and culture, Martin Griffin’s main interest is the relationship of the literary arts to political ideas and action, both historical and contemporary. His first book Ashes of the Mind explores the role of memory and commemoration for Northern writers in the decades after the Civil War. Since then, he has written on a range of topics, from Herman Melville’s relationship with military service to how American accounts of the Iraqi coup of 1958 emerge in both fiction and official documentation. His latest book Reading Espionage Fiction: Narrative, Conflict, and Commitment from WW1 to the Contemporary Era is a study of the connections between political ideas and the modern espionage story. He teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses on American fiction, genre fiction, and literature’s role in our longer cultural history.
Education
- Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles
- M.A., University College Dublin
- B.A., University College Dublin
Specialties
Publications
Books
- Reading Espionage Fiction: Narrative, Conflict and Commitment from WW1 to the Contemporary Era. Edinburgh UP, 2024.
- Stories of Nation: Fictions, Politics, and the American Experience. Editor, with Christopher Hebert. University of Tennessee Press, 2017.
- Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy: Once Upon a Time in a Globalized World. With Constance DeVereaux. 2013. Routledge, 2017 (pb).
- Ashes of the Mind: War and Memory in Northern Literature, 1865-1900. The University of Massachusetts Press, 2009
Articles and Essays
- “Homeland and American Poetry” in When American TV Became American Literature, Brill, forthcoming in 2025.
- “Of Gaines and Genre: Plotting the Racial Borders in Southern Louisiana.” Mississippi Quarterly (76:2) 2024.
- “The Maugham Paradigm: Commitment, Conflict, and Nationality in Early Espionage Fiction.” Partial Answers 21:1 (2023).
- “Officers and Men,” in Herman Melville in Context, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
- “Dave Burrell’s Baghdad Blues: Fiction, Race, and History in 1950s Iraq,” in Stories of Nation: Fictions, Politics, and the American Experience. The University of Tennessee Press, 2017.
- “Cassandra, Bartleby, and the Direction of Time: Some Thoughts on Unknowability,” in A Passion for Getting It Right: Essays and Appreciations in Honor of Michael J. Colacurcio’s 50 Years of Teaching. New York: Peter Lang, 2016.
- “How Whitman Remembered Lincoln,” New York Times Disunion series, May 4, 2015. Online. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/how-whitman-remembered-lincoln/?_r=0