Professor Taylor Hagood teaches American literature, with specialization in the writing of William Faulkner, African American literature, disability studies, thing studies, and the literature and culture of the United States South. Increasingly, he is exploring comparative approaches that span disciplines, such as ecocriticism, animal studies, and the Anthropocene, in an effort to theorize rurality in literature, history, public policy, and other dimensions of culture.

Professor Hagood's books encompass a range of interests. His monographs include Faulkner's Imperialism: Space, Place, and the Materiality of Myth (2008); Secrecy, Magic, and the One-Act Plays of Harlem Renaissance Women Writers (2010); Following Faulkner: The Critical Response to Yoknapatawpha’s Architect (2017); and Faulkner: Writer of Disability (2014), winner of the C. Hugh Holman Award for Best Book in Southern Literary Studies. Along with these single-authored books, he edited Critical Insights: The Sound and the Fury (2014) and coedited Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture (2015) with Eric Gary Anderson and Daniel Cross Turner and Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies (2020), with Kirstin L. Squint, Eric Gary Anderson, and Anthony Wilson. His newest book, Stringbean: The Life and Murder of a Country Music Legend , is a biography/true crime about Grand Ole Opry banjo player, singer, and comedian, David “Stringbean” Akeman, whose brutal murder in 1973 rocked Nashville and the country music industry. Continuing in the biographical vein, Professor Hagood’s forthcoming book, Theodore Pratt: A Florida Writer’s Life , presents the life of the south Florida author of the classic novel, The Barefoot Mailman.  

Currently, Professor Hagood is expanding and diversifying as a scholar, writer, and intellectual. He is researching work toward an interdisciplinary theory/philosophy/history of rurality across time and space. As a lecturer for general audiences, he is in demand across south Florida and the country on topics in literature, art, music, culture, and history.

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