Martyn Richard Bone

Short presentation

Martyn Bone, associate professor of American literature

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Martyn Bone's main research areas are the literature and culture of the U.S. South, African American literature, and transnational American studies. He is the author or (co-) editor of seven books.  He teaches a range of courses in American literature, African American literature, U.S. southern literature, American studies, and U.S. popular music.

Martyn is the author of Where the New World Is: Literature about the U.S. South at Global Scales (University of Georgia Press, 2018: Where the New World Is) and The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction (Louisiana State University Press, 2005: Postsouthern). His third monograph, The Writings of Jesmyn Ward: Matters of Black Southern Life and Death, will be published by the University of Iowa Press in spring 2025: The Writings of Jesmyn Ward. This book project was supported by a 2022-23 Carlsberg Foundation monograph fellowship: Carlsberg monograph fellowship. You can read more about the project here: Literature offers a different kind of witnessing to environmental catastrophe. 

Martyn is the editor of Perspectives on Barry Hannah (University Press of Mississippi, 2007: Perspectives) and co-editor of the University Press of Florida "Understanding the South" mini-series: Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South (2013); The American South in the Atlantic World (2013); and Creating and Consuming the American South (2015: Creating and Consuming).

Martyn has contributed to numerous books including Jesmyn Ward: New Critical Essays (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), A History of the Literature of the U.S. South (Cambridge University Press, 2021), The Oxford Handbook of the Literature of the U.S. South (Oxford University Press, 2016), the New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and the Cambridge Companion to American Fiction after 1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2011). His articles have appeared in American Literature, Journal of American Studies, CR: New Centennial Review, African American Review, and other journals.

Martyn was previously associate professor of English at the University of Mississippi and lecturer in American studies at the University of Nottingham. He been a visiting professor/scholar at Mississippi, the University of Sydney (twice), and the University of Manchester.

Martyn is a member of the department's research forum in environmental humanities, which he will chair from spring 2025. At the end of 2022, he was elected to the faculty PhD committee, which he has chaired since August 2023.

Primary fields of research

American literature
American studies
Literature and culture of the U.S. South
African American literature
Transnational American studies

Teaching

American literature and culture
American studies
Literature and culture of the U.S. South
Transnational American studies
African American literature and culture

Fields of interest

Contemporary American literature
Literary geography
The Black Atlantic
American popular music since the 1960s