Peter Ingrao

Ph.D. - Humanities (Concentration in Studies in Literature)
University of Texas at Dallas - 2004

M.A. - English (Concentration in Creative Writing)
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC - 1998

B.A. - English (Concentration in Creative Writing)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, - 1996

 “The Master of Slaughter Swamp: Race, Rebellion, and Zombies,” forthcoming from LSU in Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies - Publication

 "The Graphic Novel and Science Fiction," , Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction  2011 - Publication

"The Roar of Flies," Poetry Now 2001 - Short Fiction and Poetry

 “The Lame to Walk,” Sojourn: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Arts  2001 - Short Fiction and Poetry

Associate Professor of Instruction
University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas [2019–Present]
Graduate Seminar in 20th Century American Literature, Exploration of the Humanities, Literature of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Contemporary American Literature, American Modernism, Literature of the American South

Clinical Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas [2009–2019]
Graduate Seminar in 20th Century American Literature, Exploration of the Humanities, Literature of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Contemporary American Literature, American Modernism, Literature of the American South

Visiting Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas [2008–2009]
Exploration of the Humanities, Mid-20th Century American Literature, Contemporary American Literature

First-Year Writing Program Faculty
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX [2005–2007]
Introduction to College Writing, Seminar in Critical Writing

Lecturer
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC [2004–2005]
Introduction to Academic Writing, Academic Writing and Research, American Literature: Colonial - Present

• "The Grim, Gritty, Gorgeous Fiction of Larry Brown, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Grit Lit" (SSSL “Trajectories in Southern Studies” panel chair), May 2020, ALA Conference
• "Teaching Morrison's The Bluest Eye," November 2019, SAMLA Conference
• "Ku Klux Culture: Cinematic and Other Media Representations of the Klan Before and After Charlottesville" (panel chair), May 2019, ALA Conference
• "Swamp Souths,” February 2018, SSSL Conference
• “Man-Horse-Dybbuk: Hybridity, Faulkner, and the Global Undead,” September 2017, ALA Symposium
• “The Contemporary South” (panel chair), September 2017, ALA Symposium
• “Distilling Appalachia: Reconsidering Heritage in the Discovery Channel’s  Moonshiners,” May 2017, ALA Conference
• "Los Muertos, Y’all: Fear the Walking Dead and the International (After)Life of Southern Home Burial,” March 2017, SASA Conference
• “Superstitious South: The Influence of Magic, Folklore, Witchcraft & Taboo in Southern Places, Narratives & Stories” (panel chair), March 2017, SASA Conference
• "Horrors of the Swamp: Reassessing Enslaved Bodies in Swamp Thing," November 2015, SAMLA Conference
• "Anse Bundren and the Vampire of the South," July 2015, University of Mississippi Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference
• “The past is . . . (un)dead”: Faulkner, Zombies, and Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels," March 2014, SSSL Conference 
•  " That (Really) Old Time Religion: Tabernacles and Blood Sacrifices in Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time," May 2013, ALA Conference
• “Strategies for Teaching McCarthy's The Road as Poem, Eco-Dystopia, and Zombie Survival Guide,” October 2012, ALA Symposium
•  "Now the Dead Sit Up with Us: The South, the American Way of Death, and Zombies," May 2012, ALA Conference
•  "Growing Gothic in the Pumpkin Patch: The Difficulty of Appalachian Stereotypes in Stan Winston's Pumpkinhead," November 2010, SAMLA Conference
• “‘What do you walk on rocks for?’: Self-Mortification and Irony in   Wise Blood,” October 2006, SAMLA Conference
• “Morrison’s Brilliant Failure: Demonic Possession and Beloved,” PCA/ACA Conference (Southern Literature and Culture), April 2006
• “Doing God’s Work: Labor and Community in Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits,” March 2006, Society for the Study of Southern Culture Conference 
•  “Remembering Me: Identity and Demonic Possession in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist and Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits,” March 2005, Southwest Commission on Religious Studies Conference
• "Haunted Homes, Sad Cafés, and the Body as Mobile Home: Place and Identity in Southern Literature” (panel chair), July 2004, University of  Mississippi Southern Writers, Southern Writing Conference 
• “‘I use to be wid de circus’: Sideshow Identity and Beyond in Welty,  McCullers and Goyen,” November 2003, SAMLA Conference
• “Religious Enthusiasm and the Serious Grotesque: Serpent-Handling in Lee Smith and Harry Crews,” October 2003, SCMLA Conference
• “‘I ain’t like Jesus’: Faith and the Grotesque in Larry Brown’s ‘A   Roadside Resurrection’” (panel chair), July 2003, University of Mississippi   Southern Writers, Southern Writing Conference 
• “Cats, Mules, and Miss Emily: Hemingway and Faulkner’s Andersonian Grotesque,” May 2003, Hemingway/Faulkner ALA Conference
• “‘Parrotlike Underworld Epithet’: The Hard-Boiled Language of        Sanctuary,” July 2002, University of Mississippi Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference
• “But Seriously: Using Humor to Punctuate the Serious in Contemporary Literature,” February 2002, SW Texas PCA/ACA Conference

PERSONAL STATEMENT

 Peter Jay Ingrao previously taught College Writing and American Literature at North Carolina State University (2004-2005), and College and Critical Writing at Southern Methodist University (2005-2007).  In addition to Exploration of the Humanities, he teaches American Literature, with a particular focus on literature of the American South, at UTD where he is Associate Professor of Instruction in Literary Studies and serves on the Committee on Effective Teaching.  

Dr. Ingrao has presented material at such conferences as the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, The Southern Writers, Southern Writing Conference, ALA, SAMLA, and The Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference.  He adores Faulkner and was honored to be invited to the 2015 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference where spoke to the influence of literature circulated by hookworm reformers upon the characterization of Anse in As I Lay Dying.  Since that time, he has visited numerous national conferences where he has both chaired panels and presented talks foremost concerned with expanding notions of the southern gothic.  He has an upcoming talk concerning Larry Brown and the difficulty (though he likes to think of this as the potential) of defining “Grit Lit.”  Dr. Ingrao also speaks locally.  He has spoken to UTD graduate students concerning writing a syllabus and organizing and editing the doctoral dissertation, written an advice column for freshmen, and is a frequently requested speaker by UTD organizations where he most recently participated on a panel concerning vampires as part of UTD’s Quenching Curiosity series.          

Materials presented by Dr. Ingrao emphasize his primary research interest in literature of the American South, especially Appalachian and southern gothic literature.  Other major areas of research include the continuing cultural importance of themes of utopia and dystopia, monsters and monstrosity, the interdependence of written and visual narration, especially as seen in comic books and film adaptations of the same, and literature of apocalypse. He is currently at work on an article concerning Larry Brown and Grit Lit for the forthcoming Routledge Companion to the Literature of the U.S. South, an introduction to a new edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula for Brown Books, and is editing a collection for Lever Press concerning representations of race, gender, and sexual identity in superhero cinema and television. 

Awards

• Recipient ROTA (Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards), 2018
• Recipient of the UTD Victor Worsfold Outstanding Teaching Award, 2018
• Finalist for the President's Teaching Excellence Award 

Publications

• Superheroes in Cinema and Television: Race, Gender, and Beyond, Editor, forthcoming from Lever Press
• Foreword to Dracula, forthcoming from Brown Book
• “The Grim, Gritty, Gorgeous Fiction of Larry Brown, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Grit Lit,” The Routledge Companion to the Literature of the  U.S. South, forthcoming from Routledge
• “A Marriage Made in Hell: Antebellum Anxieties, Contemporary Ecoculture, and Swamp Zombies!,” March 2020 from LSU in Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies
• "The Graphic Novel and Science Fiction," August 2011, Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction 
• “The Roar of Flies,” Summer 2001, Poetry Now 
• “The Lame to Walk,” Spring 2001, Sojourn: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Arts

University Activities and Committees

• Committee on Effective Teaching, September 2018 – December 2019, University of Texas at Dallas, Concurrent Committee of the Academic Senate
• "Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing," November 2019, University of Texas at Dallas
• "Vampires," November 2019, University of Texas at Dallas Graduate Studies Event
• Invited to membership in the Alpha Psi Nu chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, International English Honor Society, October 2019, University of Texas at Dallas
• Committee for the President's Award for Excellence by a Teaching Assistant, March 2019, University of Texas at Dallas, Concurrent Committee of the Committee on Effective Teaching
• “Southern Literature Panel” 
  Peter J. Ingrao, Moderator
  RAW Conference, February 2019, University of Texas at Dallas GSA Event
• Reunion Writing Contest Judge, January 2019, University of Texas at Dallas
•  “Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,” October 2018, University of Texas at Dallas Graduate Studies Event 
• Committee on Learning Management Systems, August 2015 – August 2018, University of Texas at Dallas, Concurrent Committee of the Academic Senate
• UTD Task Force on Student Evaluations, January 2018 – May 2018, University of Texas at Dallas, CTL Task Force
• “Sips of Science,” October 2017, University of Texas at Dallas Graduate Studies Event 
• "It Comes at Night Question and Answer, October 2017, University of Texas at Dallas Meteor Theater Event 
• "Blade Runner Question and Answer," March 2017, University of Texas at Dallas Meteor Theater Event 
•  Podcast Interview with Dr. Stephen T. Asma, February 2017, University of Texas at Dallas GSA Event 
• “Mysterious Mannerisms” Peter J. Ingrao, Moderator RAW Conference, February 2017, University of Texas at Dallas GSA Event
• Faculty Advisor CARP, March 2016 – December 2016 University of Texas at Dallas Student Organization 
• "The Justice War: Ideological Difference in Batman versus Superman Combat," Comet Con, March 2016, University of Texas at Dallas SUAAB Event 
• “Social Interdisciplinarity” and “The Faulkner Files” Peter J. Ingrao, Moderator RAW Conference, March 2016, University of Texas at Dallas GSA Event 
• “Writing a Syllabus,” February 2016, University of Texas at Dallas Graduate Student Seminar 
• “Who Owns the Knight?: Batman, Film, and Fan Culture,” Comet Con, March 2015, University of Texas at Dallas SUAAB Event 
• “The Science of Scares,” October 2014, University of Texas at Dallas, UTD Mercury Interview 
• “The Physicist in Contemporary Popular Culture,” April 2014, University of Texas at Dallas, SPS lecture
• “‘They were trying to kill it’: Godzilla’s Persistence in Popular Culture,” Comet Con, March 2014, University of Texas at Dallas SUAAB Event 
• “The Distance between American Reality and the American Dream: Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. and Wrecking Ball," October 2013, University of Texas at Dallas Radio UTD Lecture Series 
• "Zombies: A Living History Question and Answer," Zombie Month, October 2013, University of Texas at Dallas Meteor Theater Event 
• "Batman’s Costume Through Time,” Comet Con, October 2012, University of Texas at Dallas SUAAB Event 
• "Freshman Advice Column," May 2011, University of Texas at Dallas Mercury Orientation Issue
• “Organizing and Editing the Doctoral Dissertation,” February 2008, University of Texas at Dallas ABD Seminar 

Professional Memberships

•  Phi Beta Kappa 
• Flannery O'Connor Society 
• American Literature Association
• South Atlantic Modern Language Association 
• Society for the Study of Southern Literature 
• Southern American Studies Association