Dr. Joseph R. Urgo

On July 1, 2010, Dr. Joseph R. Urgo became the sixth president of St. Mary's College of Maryland. Dr. Urgo most recently served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty at Hamilton College in upstate New York.

Urgo's research interests focus on the works of 20th-century American novelists and writers William Faulkner and Willa Cather. He has published five books: Faulkner's Apocrypha: A Fable, Snopes, and the Spirit of Human Rebellion; Novel Frames: Literature as Guide to Race, Sex, and History in American Culture; Willa Cather and the Myth of American Migration; and In the Age of Distraction. Urgo's sixth book, co-authored with Noel Polk, Reading Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!, will be published in March 2010. Urgo has edited or co-edited numerous volumes, including a classroom edition of Willa Cather's My Antonia. He has also written dozens of essays, including analyses of affiliation and collegiality in the academy.

These books are available for purchase at the Campus Store:

Novel Frames: Literature As Guide to Race, Sex, and History in American Culture

by Joseph R. Urgo

Literature senses the wholeness of culture while noting culture's distinctive contradictions. In this innovative study of American culture in the twentieth century Joseph R. Urgo attempts to clarify what occurs as the modes of mass media objectify cultural phenomena. To do this he moves a novel from its time and uses it to explain another, thus demonstrating that fiction speaks across chronology and has resonance in both traditional and popular culture.

Faulkner in America

edited by Joseph R. Urgo and Ann J. Abadie

With essays by Richard Godden, Catherine Gunther Kodat, Kathryn B. McKee, Peter Nicolaison, Charles A. Peek, Noel Polk, Hortense J. Spillers, Joseph R. Urgo, Linda Wagner-Martin, and Charles Reagan Wilson

William Faulkner is Mississippi's most famous author and arguably one of the country's greatest writers. But what was his relationship with America? How did he view the nation, its traditions, its issues?

In ten essays from the 1998 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, held at the University of Mississippi, Faulkner in America looks closely at the exchange between William Faulkner the writer and his national affiliation. Collectively, the essays ask which American ideas, identities, and conflicts we should associate with Mississippi's Nobel Laureate.

Faulkner and His Contemporaries

edited by Joseph R. Urgo and Ann J. Abadie

Essays by Houston A. Baker, Jr., Deborah Clarke, Grace Elizabeth Hale, W. Kenneth Holditch, M. Thomas Inge and Donária Romeiro Carvalho Inge, Donald M. Kartiganer, George Monteiro, Danièle Pitavy-Souques, Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, Merrill Maguire Skaggs, Joseph R. Urgo.

Faulkner and His Contemporaries explores the relationship between the Nobel laureate, ensconced in his "postage stamp of native soil," and the contemporary world of letters within which he created his masterpieces.

Faulkner's Inheritance

edited by Joseph R. Urgo and Ann J. Abadie

Essays by Susan V. Donaldson, Lael Gold, Adam Gussow, Martin Kreiswirth, Jay Parini, Noel Polk, Judith L. Sensibar, Jon Smith, and Priscilla Wald

Faulkner's Inheritance is a collection of essays that examines the influences on Faulkner's fiction, including his own family history, Jim Crow laws, contemporary fashion, popular culture, and literature.

Faulkner and Ecology of the South

edited by Joseph R. Urgo and Ann J. Abadie

The essays collected in Faulkner and the Ecology of the South explore Faulkner's environmental imagination, seeking what Ann Fisher-Wirth calls the "ecological counter-melody" of his texts. "Ecology" was not a term in common use outside the sciences in Faulkner's time. However, the word "environment" seems to have held deep meaning for Faulkner. Often he repeated his abiding interest in "man in conflict with himself, with his fellow man, or with his time and place, his environment."

Reading Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!

by Joseph R. Urgo and Noel Polk

Absalom, Absalom! has long been regarded as one of William Faulkner's most difficult, dense, and multilayered novels. Reading Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom! offers a close examination and interpretation of the novel. Here difficult words and cultural terms that might prove to be a problem for general readers are explained and keyed to page numbers in the definitive Faulkner text (Library of America and Vintage editions). The authors place Faulkner's novel in its historical context, while also connecting it to his other works.