Rate My Professor James Clawson

James Clawson served as Associate Professor of English in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Grambling State University, holding the Ann Petry Endowed Professorship from 2017 to 2024. He earned a B.A. in English (Creative Writing) and Music from Denison University in 2002, an M.Sc. in Writing and Cultural Politics from the University of Edinburgh in 2003, and a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh in 2007. At Grambling State University since 2009, Dr. Clawson taught courses in composition, literature, grammar, and data analytics, while directing the Data Analytics Certificate program in the College of Arts and Sciences. His academic interests encompass Literature, with teaching and research bridging traditional literary studies and computational methods.

Dr. Clawson’s research focuses on twentieth-century literature, particularly the works of Lawrence Durrell, James Joyce, and contemporary Scottish authors, alongside digital humanities, authorship attribution, and computational literary analysis. He co-organized conferences and panels in the United States, Scotland, and Greece. Key publications include the monograph Durrell Re-Read: Crossing the Liminal in Lawrence Durrell’s Major Novels (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016); “De Doctrina Christiana and Milton’s Canonical Works: Revisiting the Authorship Question,” co-authored with Hugh F. Wilson (Renaissance and Reformation 44.3, 2021), which received the journal’s Best Article of the Year award in 2022; contributions to The Year’s Work in English Studies on twentieth-century American literature (2014–2021); and forthcoming Heresy and Heterotopia in Works by Lawrence Durrell: Alexandria to Angkor Wat (Bloomsbury, 2025). As co-director, he helped secure a $92,919 National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2020 for a Digital Humanities program at Grambling State University. Dr. Clawson served as past president of the International Lawrence Durrell Society and remains active on its executive board, contributing to scholarly discourse in Literature and interdisciplinary fields.