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Department of English
University of Mississippi

Deborah Barker

Deborah BarkerDeborah Barker has a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University and has taught at University of Mississippi since 1990. Her latest book, Reconstructing Violence: The Southern Rape Complex in Film and Literature, takes as its starting point D. W. Griffith’s infamous The Birth of a Nation and demonstrates how the tropes and imagery of the southern rape complex continue to assert themselves across a multitude of genres, time periods, and stylistic modes. Barker co-edited with Kathryn McKee, American Cinema and the Southern Imaginary. Barker’s first book, Aesthetics and Gender in American Literature: The Portrait of the Woman Artist, deals with the role of the artist in literature by American women writers. She has also written a number of essays on southern film and literature and she is currently working on a collection of essays on southern noir.

Education

  • Ph.D., Princeton University, English and American Literature (1991)
  • M.A., State University of New York, Stony Brook, English and American Literature (1987)
  • M.A., University of Oklahoma, Sociology (1980)
  • B.A., University of Oklahoma, Sociology (1978)

Teaching and Research Interests

  • Film Theory and Criticism
  • Southern Film and Literature
  • Gender Theory and Criticism
  • 19th- and 20th-Century American Literature

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Selected Publications

  • Reconstructing Violence: The Southern Rape Complex in Film and Literature. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2015.
  • “Reconstructing Scarlett and the Economy of Rape in Gone with the Wind.” In New Approaches to Gone with the Wind.  Ed. Andrew Crank. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2015.
  • “Adapting Tyler Perry: Madea Goes to Jail.” Interpreting Tyler Perry: Perspectives on Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality. (Routledge Transformations in Race and Media). Ed. Jamel Bell and Ronald L. Jackson. New York: Routledge, 2014. 114-128.
  • “Demystifying the Modern Mammy in Requiem for a Nun.”  Faulkner and Film. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2014.
  • “Moonshine and Magnolias: The Story of Temple Drake and Birth of a Nation.”  Special Editor, Jay Watson. Faulkner Journal 22.1&2 (Fall 2006/Spring 2007): 140-175. Reprinted in Faulkner and Whiteness. Ed. Jay Watson. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, (2011).

Office

C219 Bondurant Hall
662-915-7758
Curriculum Vitae
dbarker@olemiss.edu