Penn State Harrisburg

Matthew Wilson, Ph.D.

ยท Professor of English and Humanities; Humanities

Biography

Dr. Wilson came to Penn State Harrisburg in 1991 after teaching in Saudi Arabia and Poland. He has published a book, Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt and has edited three of Chesnutt's previously unpublished novels' Paul Marchand, F.M.C., A Business Career, and Evelyn's Husband (all University Press of Mississippi). In addition, he has published on contemporary American fiction and writing pedagogy.

In 2006 he was awarded the Penn State Harrisburg Faculty Research Award, and in 2005 the Sylvia Lyons Render Award of the Charles W. Chesnutt Society for "outstanding scholarship on the life and works of Charles W. Chesnutt". He has taught for two years in Saudia Arabia and three years in Poland, most recently as Fulbright Chair in American Literature and Culture in the English Institute at the University of Lodz, Poland.

Professional Affliations
  • NorthEast Modern Language Assocation
  • American Studies Association

Research Interests

  • African American Fiction
  • Contemporary American Fiction
  • Charles W. Chesnutt

Courses Taught

  • ENGL 433, American Novel: 1900 - 1945
  • ENGL 436, American Fiction Since 1945
  • ENGL 466, African American Novel I
  • ENGL 467, African American Novel II
  • ENGL 469, Slavery and the Literary Imagination: Slave Narrative & Neo-Slave Novel
  • ENGL 485: The World Novel in English
  • ENGL 497: Contemporary World Fiction

Publications and Research

  • Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.
  • A Business Career by Charles W. Chesnutt. (Co-editor, Marjan van Schaik). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
  • Evelyn’s Husband by Charles W. Chesnutt. (Co-editor, Marjan van Schaik). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
  • "’The Advent of the Nigger’: The Careers of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Henry O. Tanner." American Studies 43 (2002): 5 - 50.
  • "Writing the Postcolonial: The Example of Soyinka’s Dance of the Forests," College Literature 27.3 (Fall 2000): 1-21.
  • "It Is Better To Stay Than To Go: The Paradox of Travel in Poland." Evansville Review X (2000): 168-188.
  • "The African-American Historian: David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident." African American Review 29 (1995): 97-107.
  • "The Ghost Writer: Kafka, Het Achterhuis, and History." Journal of American Jewish Studies 10 (1991): 44-53.