Perrin, Tom

Dr. Perrin joined the Huntingdon faculty as assistant professor of English in 2011. Soon after, he participated in the design of and created assessment measures for a new general education curriculum. He was appointed head of the College’s honors program in 2016, increasing program participation by nearly 80 percent in his first year at the helm. In 2017 he was appointed associate provost, participating on the Strategic Planning Committee and creating curricula and securing grant funding for the College’s SACSCOC Quality Enhancement Plan—an academic emphasis on vocation and calling. He currently chairs Huntingdon’s Race and Justice Initiative, working with faculty, staff, and alumni in coordinating academic, cocurricular, and alumni efforts to further social justice at Huntingdon. His book, The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction: Popular US Novels, Modernism, and Form, 1945–75 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), was published in 2015.

Publications

Books
2015          The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction: Popular US Novels, Modernism, and Form, 1945–75 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan)

Edited Collections
2016          “The Middlebrow,” with Cecilia Konchar Farr, essay cluster, Post45 Peer-Reviewed (July), http://post45.research.yale.edu/2016/07/the-middlebrow-a-special-cluster/
2012          “On Patricia Highsmith,” with Mary Esteve, essay cluster, Post45 Peer-Reviewed (Dec.), http://post45.research.yale.edu/archives/2773

Refereed Journal Articles
2012          “The Old Men and the ‘Sea of Masscult’: T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and Middlebrow Aesthetics,” American Literature 84.1 (March): 151–173
2011          “Rebuilding Bildung: The Middlebrow Novel of Aesthetic Education in the Mid-Twentieth Century US,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 44.3 (Fall): 382–401

Book Chapters
2018          “The Great American Novel,” in American Literature in Transition, 1970–1980, ed. Kirk Curnutt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.197–209
2017          “Edited for the Old Lady in Dubuque: The Middlebrow Literature of the Midwest,” in The Midwestern Moment: The Forgotten World of Early Twentieth-Century Midwestern Regionalism, vol. 1 of Rediscovering the American Midwest, 3 vols., ed. Jon Lauck (Hastings, NE: Hastings College Press), pp.265–77
2015          “On Blustering: Dwight Macdonald, Modernism, and The New Yorker,” in Writing for The New Yorker: Critical Essays on an American Periodical, ed. Fiona Green (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp.228–48

Book Reviews
2019          “Critique, Tweaked,” review of Timothy Aubry, Guilty Aesthetic Pleasures; Merve Emre, Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America; Hugh McIntosh, Guilty Pleasures: Popular Novels and American Audiences in the Long Nineteenth Century; Vera Tobin, Elements of Surprise: Our Mental Limits and the Satisfactions of Plot, American Literary History 31.3 (Fall): 530–39

Public and Creative Writing
2020          “Vocation for Atheists” [blog post], Vocation Matters: Insights and Conversations from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE), March, https://vocationmatters.org/2020/03/05/vocation-for-atheists/
2019          “One Way To Make College Meaningful” [op.ed.] The New York Times, Feb. 2, p.SR12
2017          [as Tom Spencer], gnomechomsky [short story], (Norwich: Galley Beggar).
2016          ——, “Signs” [short story], THAT 1, March: 96–97.
2015          “Harper Lee’s Bad Form,” review of Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman, Public Books (Sep. 15): http://www.publicbooks.org/fiction/harper-lees-bad-form