Smith, Erin A(nn) 1970-

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SMITH, Erin A(nn) 1970-

PERSONAL: Born January 5, 1970, in Midland, MI; daughter of John Adams (a purchasing manager) and Jennifer (a teacher; maiden name, Jenson) Smith. Ethnicity: "White." Education: Michigan State University, B.A. and B.S. (with high honors), 1991; Duke University, Ph.D., 1997.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of American Studies and Literature, University of Texas at Dallas, P.O. Box 830688 GR26, Richardson, TX 75083-0688; fax: 972-883-2440. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Duke University, Durham, NC, instructor in English, 1993-95, Simone de Beauvoir Instructor in Literature, 1996-97, fellow at Center for Teaching and Learning, 1995-96; University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, assistant professor, 1997-2003, associate professor of American studies and literature, 2003—, McDermott Scholars faculty fellow, 2000-02, and associate director of Gender Studies Program. Mellon fellowship in the humanities, 1991-96; guest on media programs; public speaker.

MEMBER: American Studies Association (chair of Wise-Susman Prize Committee, 1999, and Women's Committee, 2001-02), Modern Language Association of America, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, American Academy of Religion, Research Society for American Periodicals, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from Louisville Institute and National Endowment for the Humanities, 2002; fellow, National Humanities Center, 2002-03.

WRITINGS:

Hard-boiled: Working-Class Readers and Pulp Magazines, Temple University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 2000.

Contributor to books, including Scorned Literature: Essays on the History and Criticism of Popular Mass-Produced Fiction in America, edited by Lydia Schurman and Deidre Johnson, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2001; and Reading Sites, edited by Elizabeth Flynn and Patrocinio Schweickart, Modern Language Association Press (New York, NY), 2004. Contributor of articles, essays, and reviews to periodicals, including Frontiers, Radical Teacher, and Book History.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Souls and Commodities: Liberal Religion and Print Culture in Twentieth-Century America.

SIDELIGHTS: Erin A. Smith told CA: "I am a literary scholar who writes about American popular books in the twentieth century. My first book, Hard-boiled: Working-Class Readers and Pulp Magazines, explores hard-boiled detective stories published in pulp magazines and cheap paperbacks in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and the working-class men who were their targeted readers. I am currently at work on a book about popular religious books in twentieth-century America. Both projects examine books and readers left out of traditional literary history. My mission is to write a history of reading in America that looks a little less like the Social Register and a little more like the American reading public. I hope to write books that engage readers inside and outside universities."