FRED COLBY HOBSON, JR.
UNIVERSITY ADDRESS: Dept. of English, CB#3520, UNC
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520 PHONE: 919-962-4005
HOME ADDRESS: 110 Hunters Ridge Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
EDUCATION:
1972
1967
1965
PHONE: 919-942-0417
Ph.D., English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
M.A., History, Duke University
A.B., English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
EMPLOYMENT:
1997-
1989-
1986-1989
1972-86
1969-70 pre-1972
Lineberger Professor in the Humanities, University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill
Professor of English and Co-Editor, Southern Literary Journal, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Affiliated Faculty in American Studies)
Professor of English and Co-Editor, The Southern Review, Louisiana State
University
Professor of English, University of Alabama (Assistant Prof., 1972-75;
Associate Prof., 1975-80; Prof., 1980-86)
Editorial Writer, Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel
Various other part-time teaching positions in the United States and England,
and various summer newspaper positions (while an undergraduate and
graduate student) as reporter, editor, and feature writer.
PUBLICATIONS--BOOKS:
The Silencing of Emily Mullen and Other Essays. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State
University Press, 2005.
Off the Rim: Basketball and Other Religions in a Carolina Childhood. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 2005.
But Now I See: The White Southern Racial Conversion Narrative. Baton Rouge and London:
Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Winner of the Jules F. Landry Award for 1999.
Mencken: A Life. New York: Random House, 1994; in paperback, Johns Hopkins University Press,
1995. Nominee for Pulitzer Prize in biography.

HOBSON--2
The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
Tell About the South: The Southern Rage to Explain. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State
University Press, 1983. Winner of the Jules F. Landry Award for 1983.
Serpent in Eden: H. L. Mencken and the South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1974.
(Editor) A Southern Enigma: Essays on the U.S. South. Valencia: Press of the University of
Valencia (Spain), 2008.
(Editor) William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!: A Casebook. New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
(Editor) South to the Future: An American Region in the Twenty-First Century. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002.
(Co-Editor, with William Andrews, Minrose Gwin and Trudier Harris) The Literature of the
American South: A Norton Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
(Co-Editor) Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, by H. L. Mencken. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1994.
(Editor, with biographical introduction) South-Watching: Selected Essays of Gerald W. Johnson.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Winner of the Lillian Smith Award for Non-
Fiction for 1983.
(Co-Editor) Literature at the Barricades: The American Writer in the 1930s. Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 1982.
_________________________
Guest Editor, Special Issue of The Southern Review (“The Life and Work of Lewis P. Simpson”),
Spring 2006. Including “Lewis P. Simpson (1916-2005),” 227-231.
BOOKS—UNDER CONTRACT AND IN PROGRESS
The Savage South: Reflections on an Image (Oxford University Press).
Co-editor, The Literature of the American South: An Oxford Handbook.
SERIES EDITOR: Southern Literary Studies, Louisiana State University Press, 1993- . To date I have selected, helped in editing, and seen through publication (or have in press) some ninety-five

HOBSON--3 books in the series. The winner of the C. Hugh Holman Award (awarded by the Society for the
Study of Southern Literature, and presented annually at MLA) has come from this series six of the past eleven years.
PUBLICATIONS--ESSAYS, ARTICLES, CHAPTERS:
“Mencken’s Defense?” Introduction to new edition of In Defense of Women, by H. L. Mencken.
New York: Barnes and Noble, 2007, vii-xv.
“Lewis P. Simpson and the Republic of Letters.” Introduction to Imagining Our Time: Recollections and Reflections on American Writing, by Lewis P. Simpson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 2007, ix-xv.
“’To Tell, To Talk’: Southern Writers in the Twentieth Century,” in The U. S. South in the
Twentieth Century, ed. Craig Pascoe. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005, 154-71.
"Louis Rubin, Newspapering, and the Autobiographical Impulse," Southern Review, 38 (Fall 2002),
690-703.
"Southern Women's Autobiography." In The History of Southern Women's Literature. Ed., Carolyn
Perry and Mary Louise Weaks. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002, 268-75.
"The Cosmopolitan Provincial: Allen Tate and the South." Atlantic Monthly, December 2000,
118-21.
"The Sportswriter: Postmodern, Postsouthern?" Perspectives on Richard Ford (ed., Huey
Guagliardo), Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 83-96.
"Up in the Country." In Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes: Back Talk from an American Region.
Ed., Dwight Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford. Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 1999. Pp. 174-83.
"The Southern Racial Conversion Narrative: Larry L King and Pat Watters," Virginia Quarterly
Review, 75 (Spring 1999), 205-25.
"The Sins of the Fathers: Lillian Smith and Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin," Southern Review, 34
(Autumn 1998), 755-79.
"Making Biography Out of Mencken." Writing Lives: American Biography and Autobiography (ed.,
Hans Bak and Hans Krabbendam). Amsterdam: V. U. Vitgeverij, 1998, 1-6.

HOBSON--4
"The Early Wolfe: Realist and Satirist," Thomas Wolfe Review, 21 (Fall 1997), 48-53.
"Of Canons and Cultural Wars." The Future of Southern Letters (ed., John Lowe and Jefferson
Humphries). New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, 72-86.
"Surveyors and Boundaries: Southern Literature and Literary Scholarship After Mid-Century,"
Southern Review, Autumn 1991, 739-55.
"Faulkner and His Shadow: The Literature of the Modern South." In The New Pelican Guide to
English Literature: American Edition (ed., Boris Ford). London: Penguin Books, 1988, 461-77.
"Mencken and the Late Confederacy." In Critical Essays on H. L. Mencken (ed., Douglas C.
Stenerson). Boston: G. K. Hall and Co., 1987, 174-86.
"Men of Letters," Kenyon Review, Winter 1986, 119-28.
"A History of Southern Image-Making." In The South: Old and New (ed., Armand Michaux).
Brussels: Center for American Studies, 1986, 23-41.
"H. L. Mencken." In Fifty Southern Writers After 1900 (ed., Robert Bain and Joseph M. Flora).
New York: Greenwood Press, 1986, 313-23.
"The Savage South: An Inquiry into the Origins, Endurance, and--Presumed--Demise of an Image,"
Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 1985, 377-95.
"The Rise of the Critical Temper," In The History of Southern Literature (ed., Louis D. Rubin, Jr., and others). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985, 252-57.
"Of Southern Honor--and Certain Southern Renegades," Southern Humanities Review, Summer
1985, 243-51.
"Thomas Wolfe and the Individual Talent," Southern Literary Journal, Spring 1984, 118-24.
"Lillian Smith and Strange Fruit." Introduction to Brown-Thrasher edition of Strange Fruit. Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1985, vii-xviii.
"John Temple Graves and Southern Liberalism." Introduction to reprint edition of The Fighting
South. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985, ix-xviii.
"H. L. Mencken and the Harlem Renaissance." In REVIEW, 1985 (ed., James O. Hoge and James
L. W. West, III). Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985, 191-96.
"A Southern Tragedy," Mississippi Quarterly, Fall 1983, 585-91.
"Gerald W. Johnson: The Southerner as Realist," Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1982, 1-25.
"No More Quentin Compsons, or A South Too Busy to Hate?" In Why the South Will Survive:

HOBSON--5
Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century After I'll Take My Stand (ed., Clyde N.
Wilson). Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981, 45-54.
Southern Mythmaking: The Savage and the Ideal. Booklet published, under grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, for the Alabama Library Association (34 pp.), 1978.
"James McBride Dabbs: Isaac McCaslin in South Carolina," Virgina Quarterly Reivew, Autumn
1977, 640-59.
"Anticipations of the Future, or the Wish-Fulfillment of Edmund Ruffin," Southern Literary Journal,
Autumn 1977, 84-91.
"The Burden of Southern Fiction," Sewanee Review, Summer 1977, 499-505.
"The Poor White in Transition," Southern Literary Journal, Spring 1977, 166-74.
____________________
”H. L. Mencken,” forthcoming in the Heath Anthology of American Literature (fifth edition).
"George Fitzhugh: An Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy" (completed but not yet submitted).
"Bryan, Scopes and Frankie Frisch: Getting It Right in The Sun Also Rises" (completed but not yet submitted).
PUBLICATIONS--SHORT ARTICLES, REVIEWS:
Short essays on W. J. Cash, Hinton Rowan Helper, Gerald W. Johnson, H. L. Mencken, Howard W.
Odum, and Lillian Smith, in Southern Writers: A New Biographical Dictionary, ed. Joseph Flora,
Amber Fogel, and Bryan Giemza. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006, 63-64, 193-
94, 220-21, 278-79, 303-04, 375-76.
“Lewis P. Simpson: In Memoriam,” Southern Literary Journal, Fall 2005, 1-3.
Review of Look Away: The U.S. South in New World Studies, ed. Deborah Cohn and Jon Smith.
Florida Historical Quarterly, v. 84 (2005), 174-76.
Review of Blood Done Sign My Name, by Timothy Tyson. Southern Cultures, Winter 2004, 86-88.
Review of Autobiographical Reflections on Southern Religious History, ed. John B. Boles. Journal of Southern Religion, 7 (2004),

HOBSON--6
“The Influence of Mark Twain,” Mark Twain Studies (Japan), 1 (October 2004), 13-16.
Review of Hearts of Darkness: Wellsprings of a Southern Literary Tradition, by Bertram Wyatt-
Brown. American Historical Review, December 2003, 1465-66.
Review of The Last Days of Big Grassy Fork, by Hunter James. Southern Cultures, Summer 2003,
98-99.
"The Sahara of the Bozart," "The Savage Ideal," "The Savage South," and "Telling About the South.'
In The Companion to Southern Literature. Ed., Joseph M. Flora and Lucinda M. MacKethan. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. Pp. 754-55, 756, 878-80.
Review of Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the American South, by Curtis
Wilkie. Oxford American, Fall 2001, 92.
Review of Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture Through a Transatlantic Lens, by Helen
Taylor. Mississippi Quarterly, Spring 2001, 276-78.
Review of The South in Black and White: Race, Sex and Literature in the l940s, by McKay Jenkins.
Journal of American History, March 2001, 1570-71.
”Det nya Sodern,” Parnass: Allt om Bocker, Autumn 2001, 8-10.
Review of Dirt and Desire: Reconstructing Southern Writing, by Patricia Yaeger, Oxford American,
November-December 2000, 100.
Review of Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s, by Pete Daniel, Southern Cultures, December
2000, 118-20.
Review of Slaves in the Family, by Edward Ball, and Battlegrounds of Memory, by Clay Lewis,
Southern Cultures, Summer 2000, 84-87.
Introduction. Cathedrals of Kudzu, by Hal Crowther. Louisiana State University Press, 2000, xi-xiv.
Preface. Sisters of Providence, ed. Allen Speer and Janet Barton Speer. Overmountain Press, 2000,
1-2.
Review of Inventing Southern Literature, by Michael Kreyling. Mississippi Quarterly, Fall 1999,
670-73.
Review of Redefining Southern Culture: Mind and Identity in the Modern South, by James C. Cobb.
Georgia Historical Quarterly, Winter 1999, 796-97.

HOBSON--7
"H. L. Mencken," In American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp.
289-92.
Review of Juneteenth, by Ralph Ellison. Oxford American, Summer 1999, p. 140.
Review of Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence, ed. James H.
Grimshaw, Jr. Resources for American Literary Study, 25 (1999) , 270-72.
Review of Eudora: A Writer's Life, by Ann Waldron: Oxford American, Spring 1999, p. 127.
"Lillian Smith: A Struggle for Wholeness," Southern Changes, 21 (Fall 1999), 16-18.
Review of Erskine Caldwell: Selected Letters 1929-1955, ed. Robert L. McDonald. Oxford
American, November-December 1999, p. 79.
Review of The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy, ed. Jay Tolson. Southern
Cultures, Winter 1997-98, 84-87.
Foreword to Southern Writers (ed., William J. Starr), Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1997, 7-10.
"From Falkner to Faulkner." Review of William Faulkner: The Making of a Modernist, by Daniel J.
Singal, Oxford American, Autumn 1997, 62-64.
"The Southern Man of Letters," Review of Robert Penn Warren: A Bio~raphy_, by Joseph Blotner,
Oxford American, Summer 1997, 73-75.
Foreword to Southern Writers (ed., William J. Starr). Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1997, 7-10.
Review of The Problem of American Realism, by M. D. Bell. American Literature, June 1995,
398-99.
Review of The Fable of the Southern Writer, by Lewis P. Simpson, Alabama Review, April 1996,
130-32.
Review of Erskine Caldwell: A Biography, by Harvey Klevar, Southern Cultures, February 1996,
119-21.
"The Southern Percys." Review of The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a
Southern Family and The Literary Percys: Family History, Gender and the Southern Imagination, by
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Oxford American, March 1995, 102-04.
"Remembering Well." Review of Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil
Rights Movement in the South, by John Egerton, Oxford American, May 1995, 128-30.
"Telling About the South." Review of The South, by B. C. Hall and C. T. Wood. Oxford American,
October 1995, 76-77.

HOBSON--8
"Fear and Loathing in Tuscaloosa," Review of Walking on Water and Other Stories, ed. Allen Weir,
Oxford American, June 1996, 86-87.
"From Democrat to Demogogue." Review of The Politics of Rage: George Wallace and the
Transformation of American Politics, by Dan T. Carter. Los Angeles Times Book Review, January
28, 1996, pp. 4, 12.
"Struggling for Happiness," Review of Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy, by Jay Tolson.
Times Literary Supplement, February 26, 1993, p. 22.
Review of T. S. Stribling: Pioneer Realist in Modern Southern Literature, by Edward J. Piacentino.
American Literature, Spring 1989, 121-22.
Short essays on H. L. Mencken, Gerald W. Johnson, "The Benighted South," and "H. L. Mencken's
South," in The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, (ed. William Ferris and Charles Reagan Wilson), the University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Review of Dresier-Mencken Letters: The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken,
1907-1945, two volumes, ed. Thomas P. Riggio; and Mencken and Sara: A Life in Letters, ed.,
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, South Atlantic Review, May 1988, 127-28.
"Charleston's Inside Agitator." Review of A Passion for Justice: J. Waties Waring and Civil Rights, by Tinsley E. Yarborough. New York Times Book Review, January 10, 1988, p. 16.
Review of To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, by William L.
Andrews. Centennial Review, Winter 1988, 79-80.
Review of With All My Might: An Autobiography, by Erskine Caldwell. South Atlantic Review,
January 1988, 171-72.
Review of Politicians, Poets, and Con Men: Emotional History in Late Victorian America, by
Burton Raffel. American Literature, May 1987, 295-96.
"The Ordeal of Arthur Inman," Kenyon Review, Winter 1987, 139-42.
Review of From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Imaginative Writing in Amerca by Shelley Fisher
Fiskin; The Labor of Words: Literary Professionalism in the Progressive Era by Christopher P.
Wilson; and James Agee: Selected Journalism, ed. Paul Ashdown. South Atlantic Review,
September 1986, 404-08.
Review of Forgotten Prophet: The Life of Randolph Bourne, by Bruce Clayton. New York History,
April 1985, 208-10
Review of The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the South, by Daniel Joseph
Singal. Southern Changes, May/June 1985, 21-22.
"The Southern Rage to Explain" (abbreviated version of the prologue to Tell About the South: The

HOBSON--9
Southern Rage to Explain), Humanities, April 1985, 16-17.
Review of Southerners All, by F. Nash Boney. Georgia Historical Quarterly, Summer 1985, 241-43.
Review of 90 in the Shade (reprint edition), by Clarence Cason. Alabama Review, January 1985,
241-43.
Review of God and General Longstreet: The Lost Cause and the Southern Mind, by Thomas L.
Connelly and Barbara L. Bellows; and The Cause of the South: Selection from DeBow's Review,
1846-67, ed., Paul F. Paskoff and Daniel J. Wilson. Mississippi Quarterly, Winter 1983-84, 128-31.
Review of The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the South, By Daniel Joseph
Singal. Mississippi Quarterly, Fall 1983, 600-603.
Review of Southern Writers and the New South Movement, 1865-1913, by Wayne Mixon. Georgia
Historical Quarterly, Winter 1982, 576-78.
Review of The Prodigal Daughter: A Biography of Sherwood Bonner, by Hubert Horton
McAlexander. Alabama Review, July 1982, 243-36.
Review of Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920, by Charles Reagan
Wilson; The South and the North in American Religion, by Samuel Hill; and Southern Evangelicals and the Social Order, by Anne Loveland. Mississippi Quarterly, Winter 1981-21, 73-77.
"Black Belt Summers." Foreword to Hunter James, All the Forgotten Places. Atlanta: Peachtree
Press, 1981.
Review of The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society, by Barnet Baskerville. South
Atlantic Review. January 1981, 129-31.
"Mencken's `Poet Born': John McClure of Oklahoma," Menckeniana, Autumn 1980, 40-43.
Review of Selections from the Letters and Speeches of James H. Hammond, ed. Clyde N. Wilson.
Mississippi Quarterly, Winter 1979-80, 92-95.
Essays on H. L. Mencken, Gerald W. Johnson, W. J. Cash, Howard W. Odum, and Willie Morris in
Southern Writers; A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Louis d. Rubin, Jr., Robert Bain, and Joseph M.
Flora. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.
Essays on Gerald W. Johnson and H. L. Mencken's "The Sahara of the Bozart," in The Encyclopedia of Southern History, ed. David C. Roller and Robert W. Twyman. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1979.
Review of Walter Hines Page: The Southerner as American, by John Milton Cooper. Mississippi
Quarterly, Autumn 1979, 675-78.
"H. L. Mencken," Academic American Encyclopedia. Princeton: Arete, 1979. Vol. 13, p. 293.

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"Mencken's Blighted Violet: The Brief Career of Frances Newman, "Menckeniana, Winter 1976,
6-9.
Review of From the Mountain: Selections from Pseudopodia, The North Georgia Review, and
South Today, ed. Helen White and Redding S. Sugg, Jr. Mississippi Quarterly, Spring 1974, 213-16.
PUBLICATIONS--JOURNALISTIC ESSAYS:
”An Anatomy of the South, II,” Southern Cultures, Spring 2000, 114-17.
”Hoop and Holler,” Brightleaf, 2 (Spring 1999), 6-7.
”My Dixie Classic,” Southern Cultures, vol. 3 (1997), 135-40. (Reprinted in The Independent
Weekly, January 1998.)
”Lillian Smith: She Spoke in Thunder,” Brightleaf, vol. 1 (Sept. –Oct. 1997), 50.
”W. J. Cash and the Awakening of a Mind,” in Books of Passage (ed. David Perkins). Raleigh, NC:
Down Home Press, 1996, 95-101.
”A History of Southern Gothic,” Oxford American, October 1996, 15-19.
"The South," The Exquisite Corpse, May-September 1988, p. 3. Reprinted in The Stiffest of the
Corpse (ed. Andrei Codrescu), San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1989, p. 254.
"Fiction: Between Banality and Catastrophe," Cream City Review, Winter 1989, p. 29.
"Sensible People and Basketball Fever," Washington Star (op. ed. page), March 5, 1981.
"Dixie," Baltimore Evening Sun, (op. ed. page), December 4, 1980.
"An Anatomy of the South," Atlanta Constitution (op. ed. page), August 7, 1980.
"The Education of Richard Nixon," Baltimore Evening Sun (op. ed. page), August 25, 1976.
"Portrait of a Black College," Commonweal, May 24, 1968, pp. 295-98
"The Sporting Life," Alabama Heritage, Summer 1986, 12-21.
"Education's True Worth," Coordinates, Spring 1985, 6.
Numerous other op. ed. page essays and review in the St. Petersburg Times, the Birmingham News, the Raleigh News and Observer, the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, the Durham (NC) Herald, the Huntsville (AL) Times, and other newspapers.
________________

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TEACHING:
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I teach courses in nineteenth and twentiethcentury American literature (particularly literature of the U.S. South) at the undergraduate and graduate levels. At Louisiana State University (1986-1989) I taught courses in the same areas. At the
University of Alabama (1972-1986)1 taught courses at all levels: American literature surveys at the sophomore level, American literature major figure courses at the junior-senior level, courses in the
American novel for undergraduates and graduate students, special topics courses in southern literature, and graduate seminars in American Realism, American Literary Naturalism, American
Romanticism (concentrating on Hawthorne and Melville), African American literature, and several periods of southern literature.
I have directed (or am directing) some forty doctoral dissertations on--among other topics--Walter
Percy, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner , Evelyn Scott, Harriet Jacobs, Robert
Penn Warren, Carson McCullers, Caroline Gordon, Elizabeth Spencer, Lee Smith, Josephine
Humphreys, Jill McCorkle, Breece Pancake, the American epic, Southwest Humor, southern autobiography, the southern community, depictions of motherhood in southern fiction, the femme fatale in southern fiction, the lesbian voice in southern literature, the place of abstraction in southern thought, the Irish presence in U.S. southern literature, the depiction of the intellectual in southern literature, the rape complex in the U.S. South, images of Acadians/Cajuns in southern literature, the influence of World War I on southern literature, the southern historical imagination, and the
American sense of displacement, and have served on various other Ph.D. and M.A., thesis committees (involving Henry James, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Walker Percy, Eudora
Welty, Truman Capote, Frank Norris, Wilma Dykeman, Doris Betts, and various other contemporary southern writers), as well as M.A. and Ph.D. committees in history departments. (At least ten of the dissertations I have directed have later been published as books.) I have also directed a number of
M.A. and undergraduate honors theses, including the winners of the 1996 and 2006 Whitfield Prize for the English Department's outstanding undergraduate honors thesis.
DEPARTMENTAL, UNIVERSITY, AND NATIONAL PROFESSIONAL SERVICE (partial):
Co-Editor, Southern Literary Journal, 1989-present.
Editorial Board, Series in Contemporary American Literature, University of Pennsylvania Press,
1987-93.
Advisory Board, Series in Intellectual Biography, University Press of Virginia, 1987-95..
Editorial Board, Southern Texts Society, 1988-present.
Board of Governors, University of North Carolina Press, 1991-93.
Editorial Board, South Atlantic Review, 1982-85, 1995-98.
Editorial Board, Southern Cultures, 1994-.
Editorial Board, Menckeniana, 1998-.

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Member of executive committee, Lamar Lecture Series, 1995-; chair, advisory committee, Lamar
2000 Lectures.
Fellow, St. George Tucker Society, 1991-.
Member of executive council of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, 1984-1987; projects committee, SSSL, 1996-98.
Consultant for "Author's America," WETA, Washington, D.C. 1991-93.
Consultant for "A Millennial Gathering: Writers of the South," Vanderbilt University, April 2000.
Consultant for the James Agee Film Project, 1994-.
Consultant, Alabama Public Television Series in Literary Biography: William Bradford Huie, 1996-
97.
Scholar-in-residence, N.E.H. Summer Institute "Southern Literature and the Southern Community,"
University at North Carolina at Chapel Hill, June-July 1989.
Lecturer, N.E.H. Summer Seminar on American Literary Realism, University of Alabama, June
1988.
Reader of manuscripts for the University of North Carolina Press, the Penn State University Press, the Cambridge University Press, the University of Georgia Press, the Louisiana State University
Press, the Oxford University Press, the University of Illinois Press, the University of Missouri Press, the University of South Carolina Press, the Johns Hopkins University Press, the Stanford University
Press, the Bucknell University Press, the University of Tennessee Press, the University Press of
Virginia, the University of Alabama Press, the University Press of Kentucky, and Peter Lang
Publishers, 1977-present.
Reader of manuscripts for the American Quarterly, the Alabama Review, the South Atlantic Review,
Southern Cultures, and other journals, 1982-present.
Reader and reviewer of projects for the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1978-present; and for the National Humanities Center, 1989-90, 1992-95, 1997-.
Outside evaluator of candidates for tenure, promotion, chairs, etc., for SUNY-Buffalo, the University of Georgia, Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Colorado,
Warwick University (Great Britain), Northwestern University, Florida State University, Emory
University, Louisiana State University, and other universities.
Visiting Professor of American Studies, The University of Hull, Kingston-Upon-Hull, Great Britain,
January-July 1982.
Invited lecturer, Department of History, University of Virginia, November 2004; Institute for the
Arts and Humanistic Studies, Penn State University, March 1999; Department of American

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Civilization, Harvard University, April 1977; and other colleges and universities in U.S.
Invited lecturer, Southern Festival of Books, October 1999, October 2006.
Invited lecturer for European Conference on American Studies, sponsored by the Belgian-
Luxembourg American Studies Association, Brussels, March 1985; and for Netherlands American
Studies Association conference on biography, Middelburg, June 1996.
Invited lecturer, “Autobiography and Memoir in the U.S. South,” at the University of Santiago,
Spain, May 2004.
Invited lecturer - series of lectures on various topics in American literature - St. Paul (Rikkyo)
University, Tokyo, June 2005.
Talks on Mencken and on southern literature to UNC alumni groups, various libraries, etc.
Consultant for series on American Civil War produced for British television by Peter Batty
Productions, London, 1986.
Ford Foundation lecturer in Center for Southern Studies, University of Mississippi, Spring 1988.
Member of English Department Graduate Advisory Committee, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, 1989-91; 1993-97. Member of Rank and Tenure Committee, 1991-92, 2000-2001,
2003-04; coordinator, American Literature Committee, 1992-94; coordinator, 20th Century
American, 1999-2001; coordinator, Southern Literature Committee, 1994-96, 2000-04; Truman
Capote Prize Committee, 1998-; Whitfield Prize Committee, 1999; M.A. written exam committee
1998-; sponsor/mentor for several Appalachian Research Fellows and several Fulbright Scholars; and various other department assignments.
Member of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Honors Advisory Committee, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994-97; member of A&S Admissions Advisory Committee, chair of subcomittee on athletic admissions, 1996-98.
Member of the advisory board, Center for the Study of the American South, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995-present.
Coordinator of Speakers Series, Center for the Study of the American South, 1999-2000.
Member of University Research Council, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995-99.
Co-director of the 1978 Alabama Symposium on English and American Literature, "The American
Writer in the 1930s." Participants included Daniel Aaron, James T. Farrell, Irving Howe, Hugh
Kenner, Townsend Ludington, Donald Pizer, and Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
AWARDS AND HONORS:
Woods Award for Nonfiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, 2009 (for The Silencing of

HOBSON--14
Emily Mullen and Off the Rim).
Parker History Book Award from the North Carolina Society of Historians, 2008.
Fellow of the Bogliasco Institute, Italy, April-May 2008.
UNC English Department Ph.D. Mentoring Award (as voted by graduate students), 2002.
Jules F. Landry Award (1999) for But Now I See: The White Southern Racial Conversion Narrative.
Fleming Lecturer, Louisiana State University, April 1998. (Lectures published by the Louisiana
State University Press.)
Nominee, Pulitzer Prize in Biography (1994) for Mencken: A Life.
Fellow of the National Humanities Center, 1991-92.
Fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Spring Semester 1991.
Lamar Memorial Lecturer, Mercer University, October 1989. (Lectures published the the University of Georgia Press.)
State of Alabama Authors Award for Nonfiction, 1986.
Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award, University of Alabama, 1985.
Nominee, North Carolina Award in Literature, 1985.
Jules F. Landry Award (1983) for Tell About the South: The Southern Rage to Explain.
Lillian Smith Award for Non-Fiction (1983) for South-Watching.
Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities (twelve-month Fellowship for Independent
Study and Research), 1976-77.
As member of the (four-member) editorial staff of the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, shared in the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1971.
MEMBERSHIPS:

HOBSON--15
South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Society for the Study of the Southern Literature, St.
George Tucker Society, Mencken Society, Thomas Wolfe Society.
BRIEF EXCERPTS from reviews of work in American literature and intellectual history:
Serpent in Eden: H.L. Mencken and the South (1974)
"An engrossing study of this pivotal era [and of] H.L. Mencken's role as Voltaire to the Southern literary renaissance . . . With scrupulous scholarship the notorious gadfly is trapped in what was perhaps his most creative role. By concentrating on one seemingly narrow issue, Professor Hobson illuminates the whole inturned debate on Southern tradition and values." The Times Literary
Supplement, June 13, 1975
"An engaging and perceptive account of H.L.M.'s long, acrimonious love-hate relationship with the land below the Mason-Dixon line . . . Illuminates . . . the intellectual life of the region as a whole between the first and second world wars." Sewanee Review, Summer 1974
"A quite solid chunk of highly readable American literary history . . . Highly recommended to unreconstructed Confederates and Damnyankees alike." Washington Post Book World, June 9, 1974
"A first-rate book . . . [The author's] writing is consistently good, with special praise due his ability to keep Mencken's flamboyant style from overwhelming his own." Southern Exposure, Winter 1975
"Probably the most thoughtful, best written and least adulatory work yet published on Mencken, a valuable monograph which should be of considerable interest to all students of Southern and
American thought and literature." Canadian Journal of History, Vol. I (no. 1), 1975
"A scholarly, quite readable monograph . . . Recounts the response of [Mencken] sympathizers . . . who undertook to stir up a Southern renaissance." New York Times Book Review, June 18, 1978
An "expert and readable survey . . . A pleasing and literate guidebook to this chapter in Southern self-recognition." National Review, September 13, 1974
The author "speaks with an authority and insight that marks him as a social critic of exceptional promise--a not-unworthy heir to such notables as [Gerald W.] Johnson, [John Crowe] Ransom and
Howard Odum. . . " Baltimore Evening Sun, June 18, 1974
"A critical study of the highest order and a literary historical chronicle of superb documentation.
Clearly written and thoroughly researched. . . " Columbia (University) Daily Spectator, September
12, 1978
"A clear, continuously interesting study of H.L. Mencken and of an important decade in the history of Southern literature." Journal of Southern History, February 1975
Tell About the South: The Southern Rage to Explain (1983)
A "lively and original study . . . [The author] makes plain how often Southerners have overlooked

HOBSON--16 the diversity of the South, and how few white Southerners have understood the black contribution to
Southern culture." New Yorker, March 26, 1984
[The author's] thesis, which he expounds with a vigor and clarity all too rare in scholarly writing, is that, from long before the Civil War, intellectual Southerners have had a compulsion to explain their region to outsiders . . . . Hobson, who writes well and probes deeply, makes an important contribution to discussion of the past and present of this revitalized section of America." Wall Street
Journal, January 24, 1984
"Tell About the South: The Southern Rage to Explain has . . . been deservedly honored . . . This study ought to have the attention of a broader educated public than academic presses usually serve because it bears on the general imperative for cultural change in the modern world . . . . Tell About the South: The Southern Rage to Explain admirably fulfills its title." American Literature, October
1984
"A splendid synthesis of history, literary criticism, sociology, theology, and old-fashioned Southern storytelling . . . Exceptionally well-organized, well-informed, well-written." Southern Exposure
March/April 1984
"A benchmark study . . . An unflinching attempt on the part of the author to 'come to terms' with the
South. . Both good synthesis and good history. It is also something that much scholarly writing is not: a thoroughly readable work." Atlanta Constitution, January 22, 1984
"Tell About the South is one of the most important studies of the South written in the last 10 years . .
. . [The author] forces his readers, especially his Southern readers, . . . to reconsider their relation to the energies and traditions of their own land." New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 25, 1984
A "superb account . . . Hobson is such a skillful stylist that he allows the reader to sympathize with all these figures of passion. . . " Sewanee Review, December 1984
"A valuable and significant work . . . [An] excellent analysis of the conflict between the agrarians and the liberals . . . " American Historical Review, December 1984
"An appealing mixture of textual analysis, cultural history and biography . . . rich in insights into the southern mind . . . . In addition, Tell About the South makes an interesting contribution to the growing body of writing on American autobiography." Times Higher Education Supplement, May
17, 1985
An "intellectually exciting study." Los Angeles Times Book Review.
"A balanced and provocative study providing short but brilliantly illuminating portraits of eighteen or so Southern writers . . . Tell About the South is a valuable contribution to Southern history and literary criticism. It is a deserving winner of the 1983 Jules F. Landry Award." Southern Historian,
Spring 1984
"Splendidly written . . . A freewheeling and eloquent survey, undoubtedly one that will be read and disputed and quoted and consulted for yours." National Review, March 23, 1984

HOBSON--17
"A gracefully and sensitively written book which provides insights into this tortured region called the South. It is a valuable addition to southern literature." Best Sellers, February 1984
"Tell About the South leaps beyond [Serpent in Eden and South-Watching] to a comprehensive discussion of a dozen and a half of the region's most penetrating and influential commentators . . .
Hobson's prose is always highly readable and at times moving . . . Tell About the South is an important book on an important subject." Southern Changes, December 1984
"An ambitious and successful exercise in literary exegesis . . . Tell About the South is an indispensable guide to a better understanding of Southern self-consciousness." Journal of American
Studies (Cambridge), April 1985
The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World (1991)
"The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World strives to liberate readers from the too-narrow notion that Southern literature means William Faulkner and a half-dozen other giants, and offers an abundance of evidence to the contrary . . . Hobson continually demonstrates an enviable tone of comfortable authority; his complete familiarity and expertise with the subject of Southern letters are apparent throughout this volume." Essays in Criticism, January 1992
"The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World raises urgent questions about canon and critical discourse at a pivotal moment in southern studies . . . [The book displays an] impressive familiarity with contemporary southern fiction, and [the] readings of certain novels, especially Fred Chappell's I
Am One of You Forever, Josephine Humphreys's Dreams of Sleep and all of Barry Hannah's, are funny and genuinely insightful." Southern Quarterly, Summer 1992
"The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World will be frequently consulted, and will influence the way Southern literature will be regarded, and even the way some doctoral theses will be focused.
[The author] has chosen this forum and form to make sense of the cutting edge of Southern literature as it is being created. . ." Chronicles, January 1992
Mencken: A Life (1994)
"A heroic undertaking . . . Advanc[es] beyond any previous effort our understanding of one of the most enigmatic figures of importance in the history of American letters. The book is done in the best narrative tradition of biography." C. Vann Woodward, The New Republic, June 27, 1994
"A truly extraordinary biography . . . a beautifully crafted, thoroughly entertaining and intellectually unsentimental book that even Mencken might find met his standards." Jack W. Germond,
Greensboro News and Record, April 17, 1994
"A comprehensive, yet bracingly readable effort . . . a superior biography" Boston Globe, May 1,
1994
"A classic biography; warmly partisan yet coolly judgmental, it tells a riveting story in crystal-clear,

HOBSON--18 flexible, lively prose that even its curmudgeonly subject could not have helped admiring . . . An immensely satisfying portrait of this bafflingly complex being..." USA Today, August5,1994
"A thorough and thoughtful piece of work. Mencken is a lively book, richly detailed and eminently fair . . . This incisive biography is a far more critical assessment of Mencken than [William]
Manchester's Disturber of the Peace." Baltimore Sun, May 1, 1994
A "lively, full-bodied biography. It will become the benchmark for all future studies of a complex, pivotal figure in American life." Atlanta Constitution, May 1, 1994
A "thorough, authoritative and well-written biography. . . provides as definitive an account of
[Mencken's] life and work as we are ever likely to have. . ." Scott Donaldson, Newsday, May 22,
1994
"A lucid, coherent, clearly definitive and respectful biography." Kirkus Review, February 1, 1994
A "superb profile . . . [The author] has captured the character, contradictions and lasting influence of the man in what will surely become the standard biography." Booklist, March 1, 1994
"The best biography of [Meneken] to date .... Hobson does a superb job of organizing [materials] into a lively, thoughtful, and eminently readable narrative." Choice, November 1994
"Thanks to [the author's] meticulous researches, we have a skilful portrait of the true Mencken, warts and all. It is a picture worth studying--and revering." The Economist, September 3, 1994
"A thorough and readable biography . . . Mr. Hobson has done justice to Mencken's life." New York
Times Book Review, May 8, 1994.
"A very good biography . . . Mr. Hobson brings the sage to life." Wall Street Journal, April 29,
1994
"The definitive biography of this acerbic journalist/critic . . . Hobson's book is extremely readable and commendably objective . . . " New York Daily News, May 6, 1994
"The latest and best" biography of Mencken. Newsweek, May 16, 1994.
"A milestone in Mencken scholarship ... definitive ... meticulously researched, judiciously balanced, and gracefully written." A "first-rate biography." American Literary Scholarship: An Annual (Duke
University Press, 1996), p. 257.
"A superb--and superbly balanced--biography of H. L. Mencken." Harvard Review (Spring 1996), p.
233.
"A massive and splendid biography of the 'American Voltaire' ... This magisterial examination of
Mencken's antipathies ... is judicious, lucid, and eminently enjoyable." Journal of American Studies
(Cambridge), 31 August 1997), 321-22.
But Now I See: The White Southern Racial Conversion Narrative (1999):

HOBSON--19
"Perhaps no scholar has been more critical to the success of [southern intellectual history] than Fred
Hobson. Beginning with his engaging Tell About the South through his The Southern Writer in the
Postmodern World, Hobson has been among the keenest observers of the southern mind and his work has played a pivotal role in the shaping of southern intellectual history. His latest effort, But
Now I See aims to add to this legacy... Hobson is arguably at this best in his gendered analysis of
[Lillian] Smith's Killers of the Dream and [Katharine De Pre] Lumpkin's The Making of a
Southerner. . . . Also intriguing is Hobson's astute analysis of class as a variable in the southern racial conversion narrative." Southern Historian, Spring 2000,
"Hobson's reading both [in] the classics and lesser-known southern works helps him to produce a thoughtful and well-written study . . . The monograph, which received the 1999 Jules and Frances
Landry Award, ought to be read by historians of religion, narratologists, racial psychologists, and general readers." Journal of American History, September 2000.
"Hobson has explored some of this terrain before, but never so directly, thoroughly, or compassionately. He pens graceful, jargon-free prose, and his nuanced interpretations of works as different as Smith's haunting jeremaid Killers of the Dream and [Willie] Morris's sweet coming-ofage memoir, North Toward Home, both provoke the reader to think anew about race, region, and redemption, and contain just enough of his subjects' real flesh and foibles to be almost compulsively readable." Oxford American, March/ April 2000.
"With control and fluid organization, Hobson explores and contrasts how each writer, from Lillian
Smith to Willie Morris, was transformed from racist into critic of the Southern culture that nurtured this racism .... Hobson suggests that the future of southern studies must be where race and class intersect." Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2000.
"No one has read, assimilated, mastered Southern nonfiction better than Fred Hobson. He has it at his fingertips and speaks more eloquently of Southerners speaking of themselves than anyone else writing today. In this volume he has in a sense opened a new vein to be mined, a new "subgenre." . .
. With But Now I See Hobson has written a groundbreaking book which will be the impetus for still more groundbreaking books." South Atlantic Review, Summer 2000.
"But Now I See . . . is a valuable and timely examination of an important genre of Southern writing. .
. Hobson's excellent discussion of Southern working class narratives of racial guilt is a welcome contribution . . . But Now I See is a noteworthy contribution to the cultural history of the American
South." World Literature Today, Spring 2000.
"Class issues are prevalent throughout . . . Hobson is at his most astute in delineating how much an author's socio-economic status affected the type of racial sins he or she committed prior to conversion .... Hobson has used the most intimate of testimonials to demonstrate the complexities inherent in the many guises of southern identity, white or black .... The moral imperatives and personal convictions behind [racial] transformation have never been conveyed more effectively. . ."
Journal of Southern History, November 2000.
"Sometimes a writer gets it just right. Fred Hobson does in his brief but enlightening examination of the 'white racial conversion narrative."' Southern Cultures, Summer 2000.

HOBSON--20
"Racial abstraction is at the core of But Now I See. Without rancor and without ideological bias,
Hobson shows clearly how racism has formed and deformed the South and those who have struggled--raged--to tell about it and in the telling sensed a cleansing and redemption." Christianity and Literature, Spring 2000.
The Silencing of Emily Mullen and Other Essays (2005):
“[This collection includes] previously published essays [which are] well worth reading again [and] three remarkable new pieces on three remarkable women. Two of these are brilliant personal essays, the third is provocative if not entirely successful; all three should be read, carefully, by anyone interested in history and culture in the United States and especially in the Southern states.” Barbara
Ladd, Mississippi Quarterly, Fall 2005.
“[A collection by] one of the most astute students of southern life who is writing today. . . A miscellany rich with appreciations, literary criticism, and biographical and autobiographical ponderings. “ Sewanee Review, Spring(?) 2007.
[The author’s] “work has for decades shaped our understanding of the South. . . . [Here] his essays on the giants of Southern culture . . . are rich and provocative assessments . . . “ North Carolina
Literary Review, 2007.
[The author] has strengthened his reputation as possibly our most perceptive interpreter of Southern life and letters with [this] potpourri of 14 essays focusing on aspects of his personal life as well as on the work of other thoughtful [Southern] intellectuals . . . “ Winston-Salem Journal, March 12, 2006.
Off the Rim: Basketball and Other Religions in a Carolina Childhood, 2005:
“To those cosmopolites not wedded to a sports team for life, this book will seem at times comical, disturbing, perverse. . . . Hobson turns upon himself the subtlety and analytical rigor that have made him one of his generation’s finest literary scholars, producing a memoir that is grounded in various communities and constituencies . . . yet is also deeply personal, even solitary.” Virginia Quarterly
Review, Summer 2006.
“This memoir is wonderful—entertaining, clearly written, and startlingly perceptive. [The author] himself is appealing, a learned person with whom one would like to chat about anything except basketball. On the subject of basketball and sports in general, he is not only off the backboard and suffering from a loose rim, but he is also on babbling terms with the folks who sport white johnnies and carry warm-up jackets with wraparound sleeves. . . . Of course Hobson’s delirium rotundus seasons the memoir and adds quirky appeal to the book. Hobson knows the sport up court and down and dribbles words about so gracefully that a reader, even one having spent a lifetime in salubrious indifference to athletics, will become a fan, at least for the duration of Off the Rim.” Sam Pickering,
The Sewanee Review, Spring (ck) 2007.
“In Off the Rim, Hobson gives us both a touching memoir and, along the way, a vivid account of

HOBSON--21
North Carolina’s intense culture of basketball worship.” Theo Lippmann, Wall Street Journal. March
31, 2006.
“A poignant memoir of [the author’s] small-town youth and his dreams of hardwood glory . . . The game has a hold on Hobson, and like the Ancient Mariner he cannot fully explain why things happen the way they do in life and basketball, but he must nevertheless indulge the Southern rage to explain
. . . [The author] also faithfully records his sense of life in the upper South during the 1950s, and the cultural changes in the air at the time.” – Raleigh News and Observer, March 19, 2006
“A joyous celebration of college basketball from the heart of Tobacco Road, this engaging memoir of growing up under the tonic spell of the Carolina Tar Heels resonates not merely with the die-hard fans of Chapel Hill legends but with all of us who are spellbound by the careless choreography of amateur sports’ greatest expression. . . . In prose that draws fascinating parallels between the region’s profound bond with evangelical religion and its ecstatic fidelity to Tar Heel basketball . . .
Hobson’s chronicle is less a simple paean to Carolina blue and more a moving and heartfelt account of childhood as a place, a context, a culture . . . [The author’s] “prose . . . delights, dances, and recalls without cloying sentimentality or excessive rhapsodizing.” Aethlon, Spring/Summer 2007.
“A rollicking good read . . . This, in fact, may be the most honest, introspective and entertaining confessional I’ve come across since, all those long years ago, I forced myself to read . . . The
Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau.” Hunter James, Winston-Salem Journal, June 18, 2006.
Edited books (partial)
South-Watching: Selected Essays of Gerald W Johnson (1983)
"A testimony of great importance from a major Southern voice [Gerald W. Johnson] . . . Mr.
Hobson's admirable introduction combines a brief biography with an appraisal of Mr. Johnson's career . . . It is in tracing the complexity of the picture that Mr. Hobson's introduction excels." Wall
Street Journal, February 7, 1983.
"South-Watching takes us back to the very beginnings of Southern self-criticism and makes for some very important, soul-searching reading . . . A very fine introduction..." Baltimore Evening Sun,
March 6, 1983.
"A superb job of selecting and collecting Johnson's work . . . An outstanding introduction . . . " St.
Petersburg Times, April 17, 1983.
"Highly recommended to all who want to understand the South and especially to those who may be even mildly curious as to why they should want to understand the South." The Center Magazine
(Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions), May/June 1983.
Literature at the Barricades: The American Writer in the 1930s (co-edited), 1982

HOBSON--22
"An exceptional overview of this difficult decade." American Literary Scholarship (1982 Annual).,
"What emerges from these strikingly interesting studies by a remarkable array of scholars, including
Irving Howe, Donald Pizer, Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Hugh Kenner, Daniel Aaron, and James R. Farrell, is a fresh, lively, and coherent picture of the American writer's struggle to maintain equilibrium and survive as an artist in a cataclysmic decade." Georgia Review, Spring 1983
"Should substantially promote scholarly exploration into the complex cultural crisis of the 1930s . . .
The editors present in this volume the complex, dynamic nature of an intense literary experience."
Southern Humanities Review, Spring 1984.
Thirty-Five Years of Newpaper Work by H. L. Mencken (co-edited), 1994
"The editors have done a fine job of cutting away the arcana that Mencken felt himself duty-bound to record and preserving only the most entertaining and revealing pieces -- about 45 percent--of the massive manuscript . . .. Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work should be required reading not merely for all newspaper people but for all those who labor in what we now call 'the media."'Washington Post Book World, September 21, 1994.
[The editors] faced a herculean difficulty and accomplished it admirably. What they had before them was a manuscript running to 1,391 pages, supplemented by thirty appendices taking up 257 more . .
.. [Their] result is a manageable (and, it goes without saying, readable) volume of slightly less than
400 pages." Menckeniana, Winter 1994, 13.