John Bassett is President and Professor of English at Clark University. He has served as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University and has taught at North Carolina State and Wayne State University. A native of Washington, D.C., Dr. Bassett has a PhD from the University of Rochester and a BA from Ohio Wesleyan He has written widely on William Faulkner, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Thomas Wolfe, the Harlem Renaissance, and Southern literature. His previous books include Defining Southern Literature: Perspectives and Assessments, 1831-1952 (editor) (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) and Harlem in Review: Critical Reactions to Black American Writers 1917-1939 (SUP).