Martyn Richard Bone

Short presentation

Martyn Bone, associate professor of American literature

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's third and most recent monograph is The Writings of Jesmyn Ward: Matters of Black Southern Life and Death (University of Iowa Press, 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 also the author of two previous monographs: Where the New World Is: Literature about the U.S. South at Global Scales (University of Georgia Press, 2018, runner-up for the C. Hugh Holman Prize from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature: Where the New World Is) and The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction (Louisiana State University Press, 2005: Postsouthern).

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. He is on the editorial boards of Journal of American Studies, C21, and Southern Quarterly.

Martyn is the departmental PhD coordinator and a member of the department's research forum in environmental humanities, which he has chaired since February 2025. 

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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