Dr. Richard Rankin Russell

Interests

Modern & Contemporary British & Irish Literature
Southern Literature

Education

Ph.D. University of North Carolina
M.A. University of North Carolina
M. Phil. University of Glasgow

Publications

Books:

10.  James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality:  Postcritical and Postsecular Reading in Dubliners and Ulysses.  Edinburgh University Press, January 2023.

Paperback edition, August 2024.

Positive reviews in Irish Studies Review and Literary Matters

9. Newly revised, expanded edition of Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel’s Drama.  Syracuse University Press, September 2022. 140 pages of new material with revisions throughout

Positively reviewed by Graham Price in Reading Ireland (2025), Maria Kurdi in Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (2024), and Stephen Watt in New Hibernia Review (2022) 

Price’s concluding assessment:

“Ultimately, Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel’s Drama should be regarded as a very important intervention in Friel studies. The theoretical engagement with Friel’s texts is probably the most thorough that has been written since F.C. McGrath’s Brian Friel’s (Post) Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion, Politics (1999). It will appeal to both Friel experts and also to those who are coming to his work relatively cold. The exceptionally detailed analysis of individual plays contained within this study means that it will be a valuable resource for lectures, seminars, and tutorials. The expanded text also provides even greater depth to what was already a very rigorous and thoughtful work.”

8. Seamus Heaney:  A Critical Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, distribution in North and South America by Oxford University Press, Fall 2016.  Favorably reviewed in New Hibernia Review, Winter 2016. Back-cover endorsements by Stephen Regan (University of Durham) and Neil Corcoran (University of Liverpool). 

Favorably reviewed in New Hibernia Review, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Year’s Work in English Studies, and Irish University Review.

7. Seamus Heaney's Regions. University of Notre Dame Press, June 2014. 498 pp. Back-cover endorsements by Stephen Regan (University of Durham), Bernard O’Donoghue (Oxford University), and Henry Hart (College of William and Mary). Second printing, 2015.

Favorably reviewed in Publisher's Weekly http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-268-04036-9, The Oxonian, Publisher’s Weekly, Irish Studies Review, Heythrop Journal, New Hibernia Review, Year’s Work in English Studies, and the Irish Literary Supplement.

Winner of the Robert Penn Warren/Cleanth Brooks Award for outstanding book in literary criticism in the United States for 2014. 

See http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=153572 and https://wkunews.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/warren-brooks-2015/. 

Foreword Reviews 2014 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award Finalist in History.

6. Editor, Bernard MacLaverty:  New Critical Readings. Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. 191 pp.

Favorably reviewed in Year’s Work in English Studies, 2016.

5. Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel’s Drama. Syracuse University Press, Irish Studies series, 2013.  318 pp. Back-cover endorsements by Terry Teachout, Drama Critic for The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Watt (Indiana University), Anthony Roche (University College, Dublin)

Favorably reviewed in Choice, Irish University Review, Comparative Drama, Studies: An Irish Quarterly, Irish Studies Review, Modern Drama, Contemporary Theatre Review, New Hibernia Review, and Estudios Irlandeses.

4. Editor, Peter Fallon:  Poet, Publisher, Translator, Editor, Irish Academic Press (Dublin, Ireland and Portland, Oregon), 2013. 215 pp. Book launch, Trinity College, Dublin: November 15, 2013.

Favorably reviewed in Year’s Work in English Studies, New Hibernia Review, Times Literary Supplement, Sunday Business Post, Irish Literary Supplement, and Sunday Times (Ireland edition) along with two radio interviews, including “Talking Books” with Susan Cahill, Newstalk Radio, Dublin, Ireland, Sunday, February 10, 2014.

3. Poetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland. University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. 381 pp. Back-cover endorsements by Henry Hart (College of William and Mary), John Wilson Foster (University of British Columbia), and Peter McDonald (Oxford University).

Reviewed favorably in Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, James Joyce Literary Supplement, and The New Criterion.
Winner of the South Central Modern Language Association Book Prize, 2011.
Winner of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Book Prize, 2011.

2. Bernard MacLaverty. Bucknell University Press, Contemporary Irish Writers Series. 2009. 175 pages Back-cover endorsement by George Watson, Institute for Irish Studies, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Reviewed favorably in Irish Studies Review and in New Hibernia Review 
Expanded paperback edition with two new chapters, July 2025 from Bucknell UP, distributed by Rutgers UP.

1. Invited Editor of Martin McDonagh: A Casebook. Routledge, Casebooks on Modern Dramatists series, 2007. Reprinted in paperback, 2012. Back-cover endorsements by Nicholas Grene (Trinity College, Dublin) and Anthony Roche (University College, Dublin). 

Reviewed favorably in The Year's Work in English Studies, 2009.

Monograph under Contract: 

“Allusion and Exile from Tennessee in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction,” forthcoming from the University of Tennessee Press, 2026

Edited Journal Volume: 

“Irish Writers.”  Invited Guest Editor for Christianity and Literature 72.2 (June 2023):  105-390. One poetry sequence, 14 original essays.

Edited Journal Volume under Contract (with John Whitmire, Western Carolina University):

Pedagogical Approaches to the Inklings/Oxford Christians for VII:  The Journal of the Marion Wade Center

Articles:

Essays on W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Eavan Boland, Tom Stoppard, Philip Larkin, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Michael Longley, William Trevor, Derek Mahon, Marina Carr, Stewart Parker, Wilfred Owen, Medbh McGuckian, Barry Unsworth, and others in journals such as Twentieth-Century Literature, Renascence, New Hibernia Review, Journal of Modern Literature, Irish University Review, Modern Drama, and Eire-Ireland.

Referee for PMLA, Studies in the Novel, English Studies, Irish Studies Review, Irish University Review, Papers in Language and Literature, New Hibernia Review, and other journals.

Honors:

Baylor University Research Leave, Fall 2025

“Richard Rankin Russell Lecture on J.R.R. Tolkien,” Tolkien Poetry Conference, April 3-5, 2025

Endowed by Baylor English Department and Established by Honors College professor Dr. Melinda Nielsen for my contributions to studies of the Inklings/Oxford Christians at Baylor

IInklings Project Fellows Grant, 2023-24:  Awarded $1500 for course development of my Oxford Christians course and the creation of an undergraduate certificate across Philosophy, Honors, and English on the Oxford Christians (McGrath Institute, Notre Dame)

Baylor Institute for Oral History Grant, 2023-24:  Awarded $1500 for conducting interviews with Irish poet Micheal O’Siadhail. 

Cornelia Marschall Smith Professor of the Year Award:  Awarded for lifetime achievements in research, teaching, and service at Baylor University, 2023

Outstanding Faculty Award, Baylor University:  Awarded for Scholarship in the Humanities, Tenured professors, 2017

FacFaculty Research Grant, South Central Modern Language Association, 2014, for research on Seamus Heaney: A Critical Introduction (Only one grant is awarded per year.)

Baylor University Research Leave, Fall 2014

Hambidge Artists’ Retreat Fellowship, Rabun Gap, Georgia.  Fall 2014.  Declined.

Baylor Centennial Professor, 2012

2012 Lily Fellows Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers: “Teaching Peace and Reconciliation:  Theory and Practice in Northern Ireland.”  Corrymeela Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, July 7-28, 2012

Literature Representative, American Conference for Irish Studies, 2011-2013

National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on W.B. Yeats. Galway, Ireland, July 7-August 1, 2008

Fellow for the National Humanities Center's Summer Seminar in Literary Studies: The King James Bible (with James Wood of Harvard), July 8-13, 2007

2007 Achievement Award for New Scholars in Humanities and Fine Arts from the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools (CSGS) for distinguished scholarship published from May, 2000 to April, 2006 by faculty from member institutions.

Outstanding Professor at Baylor, 2003-04.  Awarded for Distinctive Scholarship as an Untenured Faculty Member in the College of Arts and Sciences

University of North Carolina Graduate School Dissertation Research Fellowship to Belfast, Northern Ireland, Spring Semester 2000

Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship, University of Glasgow, 1994-95