Matthew Sutton

Education

• Ph.D. in American Studies (2011), College of William and Mary
• M.A. in English (1999), University of Kentucky
• B.A. in English (1994), University of Kentucky

Teaching Specializations

• Early American Literature
• 20th-Century American Literature
• Autobiography and Life Writing
• U.S. Southern Studies
• Appalachia
• Popular Culture and Popular Music
• Sound Studies
• Composition

Biography

Matthew D. Sutton teaches courses in composition and American literature. Currently, he is revising his dissertation, Storyville: Discourses in Southern Musicians’ Autobiographies, into a book. His recent essays have been published in American Literature, Mississippi Quarterly, Popular Music and Society, and the edited volumes Faulkner and Hemingway, Southern Comforts: Drinking & the U.S. South, and Swamp Souths. Forthcoming essays in 2024–2025 will analyze soundscapes in U.S. southern literature, the bardic tradition linking Shakespeare and Bob Dylan, and melancholia in the work of jazz musician and mystic Sun Ra. Additionally, he serves as associate editor for McFarland’s Companions to 19th-Century Literature book series and the Educational Advisory Committee of the American Song Archives (The Bob Dylan Center/Woody Guthrie Archives).

Dr. Sutton has completed a post-doctoral appointment at East Tennessee State University and research fellowships at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Summersell Center for the Study of the South at the University of Alabama, the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, the Archives of Appalachia, and the Woody Guthrie Archives.