Tommy Anderson Named 2014 MSU Humanities Teacher

Anderson

STARKVILLE, Miss. (Press Release) — An associate professor of English is Mississippi State’s 2014 Humanities Teacher of the Year.

The selection of Thomas P. “Tommy” Anderson recently was announced by the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, along with the Mississippi Humanities Council. As part of the honor, Anderson will present the college’s annual humanities lecture.

Titled “Why Shakespeare Matters…Now,” his address begins at 3 p.m. Monday [Nov. 17] in the Shackouls Honors College Forum Room. The event is open to all, as is a reception immediately following in the same fourth-floor Bryce Griffis Residence Hall location.

Along with formally presenting a topic of his choosing to campus and local communities, Anderson is receiving a $500 honorarium.

An English department faculty member since 2005, he is a specialist in literature of the 16th and 17th centuries, with a particular emphasis on drama. His teaching areas include Shakespeare, critical theory and early modern British literature.

“The College of Arts and Sciences is filled with so many inspirational teachers in the humanities that inspire me as a colleague, and I am very honored and humbled to be included in this group,” Anderson said of the annual faculty recognition.

In addition to teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, the Vanderbilt University doctoral graduate now is in his third year as mentor for MSU’s Presidential Endowed Scholars Program. A Nashville, Tennessee, native with a master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University, he also directs MSU’s Office of Prestigious External Scholarships.

Anderson previously served for more than four years as director of the English department’s undergraduate program.

He is the author of “Performing Early Modern Trauma from Shakespeare to Milton” (Ashgate, 2006), as well as two essays on Julie Taymor’s film version of “Titus Andronicus.”

Additionally, he has worked with co-editor Ryan Netzley on “Acts of Reading: Interpretation, Reading Practices, and the Idea of the Book in John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments,” a consideration of theoretical implications of the hypertext edition of the Protestant history popularly known as “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.”

In 2010 and 2011, respectively, Anderson was honored with the college’s Dean’s Eminent Scholar Award and Humanities Researcher of the Year recognition. In 2008, he was chosen for the Shackouls Honors College Outstanding Faculty Award. For more biographical information, see www.english.msstate.edu/faculty/anderson.html.

For more on the Monday humanities lecture, contact Whitney Peterson at 662-325-2646 or wpeterson@deanas.msstate.edu.

MSU’s College of Arts & Sciences is found online at www.cas.msstate.edu.

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