Dr. Mark Whalan joined the University of Oregon as the Robert D. and Eve E. Horn Professor of English in 2011, after beginning his career at the University of Exeter in the UK. He specializes in American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, and has published four books: The Letters of Jean Toomer, 1919-1924 (University of Tennessee Press 2006); Race, Manhood and Modernism in America: The Short Story Cycles of Sherwood Anderson and Jean Toomer (University of Tennessee Press 2007); The Great War and the Culture of the New Negro (University Press of Florida, 2008; and American Culture in the 1910s (Edinburgh University Press, 2010). He is on the editorial board of the Journal of American Studies, and has published in African American Review, Modernism/Modernity, American Art, Studies in American Fiction, Modern Fiction Studies, and the Journal of American Studies. His current work examines the relations between American modernism, World War One, and the development of the federal state.