Ben Murphy
Assistant Teaching Professor of English
Department: English
Email: bmurphy24@elon.edu
Phone number: (336) 278-5623
Professional Expertise
Brief Biography
Ben Murphy is an Assistant Teaching Professor in English, and he also serves on the advisory committee for the African and African-American Studies at ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ (AAASE) program. He teaches courses in African American literature, Black Studies, genre fiction, and first-year writing.
He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where his award-winning dissertation was supported by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship.
His research focuses on African American literature, race, and science in the long 19th century (circa 1800 -1930), as well as on Black speculative fiction and film from all historical periods.
Links
News & Notes
Education
Ph.D., English, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
B.A., Humanities & Creative Writing, Houghton College
Courses Taught
At ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ:
ENG 1100: Writing--Argument & Inquiry
ENG 1237: Zombie Fiction & Film
ENG 1238: Black Speculative Fiction
GBL 1235/2235: Spain--Art & Revolt (Winter Term Travel Abroad Class)
IDS: 2810/2820: Liberal Arts Forum (Student Organization Credit)
ENG 2250: African American Literature Until 1945
ENG 2260: African American Literature After 1945
ENG 3300: The Harlem Renaissance
ENG 3350: African American Novels
Leadership Positions
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Research Articles
"Recovering The American Lynching-Mob (1906): Crowd Theory, Racial Violence, and Complicity." Forthcoming in J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
"Race, Crowds, and Resistance in Lovecraft’s Country: From Poe’s Old Old Weird to Victor LaValle’s New Black Gothic" Studies in American Fiction 52.1 (2025): 97-125.
“‘Multiplied without Number:’ Lynching, Statistics, and Visualization in Ida B. Wells, Mark Twain, and W. E. B. Du Bois.” American Literature 93.2 (2021): 195-226
“Not So New Materialism: Homeostasis Revisited.” Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology 27.1 (2019): 1-36
"Exceptional Infidelity: James Dickey’s Deliverance, Film Adaptation, and the Postsouthern.” Mississippi Quarterly 69.2 (2018): 206-225
Recent Book Reviews:
On Earth as it is Beneath (Charco Press)
Of Black Study by Joshua Myers (Pluto Press)
Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier (Tin House)
In the Black Fantastic ed. by Ekow Eshun (MIT Press)
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut (NYRB)