Guy Reynolds
337D Andrews Hall
Lincoln, NE 68588-0333
(402)472-0249 (office)
greynolds2@unlnotes.unl.edu

Guy Reynolds

After an early career in the U.K. (graduate studies at Cambridge; teaching at the University of Kent) I came to UNL as a Professor in 2003. Here, I’ve directed the Cather Project – a team of scholars dedicated to editing Cather’s texts, running seminars and other events, and producing Cather Studies. I am the general editor of the Cather Scholarly Edition, a multi-volume, MLA-vetted series of annotated texts. 

Within the UNL English department, I am Chair of Graduate Studies.    

As well as my work on Cather, I have wide teaching and research interests in American literature.  My recent work focuses on the international and transatlantic dimensions of post-war writing.  Apostles of Modernity: American Writers in the Age of Development (2008) is a close study of internationalism and writing, a contribution to the study of literature in an accelerating era of globalization and, perhaps, ‘Americanization.’  The book features a swathe of figures, from Malcolm X to Paul Bowles to Pearl Buck to Don DeLillo, and focuses on the fiction and reportage produced by Americans in a decolonized and ‘post-European’ world. 

I am currently working on another project which carries forward these ideas (about writing and travel; about literary culture and globalization; about authorship and  cosmopolitanism; about imagining strangers) into the current era.  The study deals with U.S. authors such as William Vollmann and Dave Eggers, but takes on, too, some of the other major figures in transatlantic  writing (notably, Michael Ondaatje). 

Alongside my books and conventionally-published essays, I try to make materials available online, via the ‘Digital Commons’ site at UNL. Here you can find digital versions of some essays, as well as talks and presentations. Please download and make use of these materials.

Degrees and institutions granting the degree

• MA, PhD, University of Cambridge

Professional Areas of Specialty

• Willa Cather; modernism; American literary history; digital humanities; post-war fiction; US and Anglophone literary internationalism. I also teach regularly in these areas, at graduate and undergraduate level.

Selected Publications and Projects

• Willa Cather in Context: Progress, Race, Empire (1996).
• Twentieth-Century American Women’s Fiction (1999).
• Ed., The Great Gatsby (Wordsworth edition available only in UK: 2001)
• Ed., Willa Cather: Critical Assessments, 4 Volumes (2003)
• Ed., Cather Studies 7: Willa Cather as Cultural Icon (2007)
• Apostles of Modernity: American Writers in the Age of Development (2008)

Here is a site for our ‘Willa Cather Archive’ at UNL, the major online resource for the study of her work and life: http://cather.unl.edu/.

A number of my essays and lectures, on Cather and other Americans, are available online via the ‘Digital Commons.’ Look under ‘Presentations’ and ‘Publications’ at this site: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/english/
Prospective graduate students can get a sense of the department’s culture by looking at some of the literary events we host and promote. Here’s a ‘Centennial Remembrance’ of Richard Wright scheduled for September 18-19, 2008:
http://english.unl.edu/wright_event.pdf
Guy Reynolds: September 2nd 2008.