"War war war," my young daughter jibes.
It was, on the surface, a utilitarian decision. In graduate school I needed a dissertation topic, and, as it was the late 1990s, I knew the generation of scholars working on war literature--the Vietnam generation--was retirement-bound. Those months as a wartime junior officer would give me a credential as well as an intimacy with the subject rare among my generation.
I was wiser than I knew (if career stumblings-along can count as wisdom). Studying war literature has provided a critical separation from as well as a deep connection to that uniformed self, leaving soldier and scholar unsundered. At ease, more or less.
Born in Dallas, raised in the Overland Park/Prairie Village suburbs of Kansas City, Kansas, the youngest of three boys, I chose to be dealt a cadet education at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) in the last years of the Cold War before serving as a tank lieutenant in the transitional Persian Gulf War (1990-1991). Then it was on to graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill, followed by grateful employment at Hendrix College. Where, sweet pea, I do more than just war, war, war.
There's Tarzan, too!
(When I saw the first two customer reviews for On Tarzan--
"A work of seminal and impressive scholarship…as well as a singularly important contribution to the reading lists for all dedicated Tarzan fans."
"You would have to be on the ill side to buy this incredibly insulting book about Edgar Rice Burroughs' famous character….You would be better of striking a match to any money used to buy it."
--I knew I had done something right.)
HENDRIX COLLEGE
Professor of English
EDUCATION
B.S., General Engineering with Literature major, U.S. Military Academy (West Point, 1989)
M.A., English, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (1994)
Ph.D., English, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (2001)
