Professor / Director of Graduate Studies
1999, PhD English, University of California at Berkeley
1987, BA English, Wesleyan University
Bio
Florence Dore joined the faculty in 2010, having earned her doctorate at UC Berkeley in 1999. She is a singer/songwriter and an academic, having published books and articles as well as released albums, and teaching in both creative writing and literature programs. She has held fellowships at New York University, the National Humanities Center, and the Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC, has won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Dore is on the Steering Committee for Post45, a collective of scholars working on American Literature and Culture since 1945, and was a founding co-editor for the Post45 Book Series at Stanford University Press. During the pandemic, she conceived of and acted as co-executive producer for Cover Charge: NC Musicians Go Under Cover to Benefit Cat’s Cradle, a benefit compilation record that came in #1 in compilations on the Billboard charts. She has organized two public conferences on rock and literature– at the National Humanities Center and Carolina Performing Arts in 2016-2017; and, with JD Connor and Amy Hungerford, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011–and she is on the Advisory Board for the Institute for Bob Dylan Studies at the University of Tulsa’s Bob Dylan Archive.
Publications:
- “Bob Dylan and American Literature,” The World of Bob Dylan. Cambridge University Press (May 2021).
- Cover Charge: NC Musicians Go Under Cover to Benefit Cat’s Cradle [Compilation: co-creators, Steve Balcom, Shawn Nolan, Lane Wurster] Self-released, July 2020.
- “Good for Nothing: Lorrie Moore’s Maternal Aesthetic and the Return to Form” Post45.org 5.1 (December 2020)
- Formalism Unbound [Special Issue, co-edited with Timothy Aubry] Post45.org 5 (2 parts: December 2020 and January 2021)
- Novel Sounds: The American Novel in the Age of Rock and Roll . (Columbia University Press, 2018)
- “Rebel Yale: Reading and Feeling Hillbilly Elegy,” with J.D. Connor and Dan Sinykin. Los Angeles Review of Books (January 10, 2018)
- “Who Owns the Blues?” Public Books.org (July 5, 2017)
- “The New Criticism and the Nashville Sound: Faulkner’s The Town and Rock and Roll.” Contemporary Literature 55.1 (Spring 2014): 32-57
- “The Rock Novel and Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude” Nonsite.org (January 2013)
- The Novel and the Obscene: Sexual Subjects in American Literature (Stanford Univ. Press, 2005)
- Perfect City. Missouri: Slewfoot Records (2001)
Awards
- Invited Fellow, The National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC (2016-2017)
- Fellow, Institute of Arts and Humanities, University of North Carolina (2013)
- Fellow, The National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC (2008-2009)
- Distinguished Teaching Award, Kent State University (2009)
- Visiting Scholar, Case Western Reserve University Law School (Spring 2008)
- National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (2001)
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, New York University Draper Program in Humanities and Social Thought (2000-2002)
- Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California at Berkeley (1998)
- Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship (1997-8)
- Mellon Dissertation Fellowship (1996-7)
- Phi Beta Kappa (1987)
Courses Taught:
- English 408: Songwriting
- English 124: Contemporary Fiction
- English 347: The American Novel