Perrin, Tom

Dr. Perrin joined the Huntingdon faculty as assistant professor of English in 2011. His book, The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction: Popular US Novels, Modernism, and Form, 1945–75 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), was published in 2015.

Selected Publications

Books
2015          The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction: Popular US Novels, Modernism, and Form, 1945–75 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan)

Edited Collections
2016          “The Middlebrow,” with Cecilia Konchar Farr, essay cluster, Post45 Peer-Reviewed (July), http://post45.research.yale.edu/2016/07/the-middlebrow-a-special-cluster/
2012          “On Patricia Highsmith,” with Mary Esteve, essay cluster, Post45 Peer-Reviewed (Dec.), http://post45.research.yale.edu/archives/2773

Refereed Journal Articles
2012          “The Old Men and the ‘Sea of Masscult’: T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and Middlebrow Aesthetics,” American Literature 84.1 (March): 151–173
2011          “Rebuilding Bildung: The Middlebrow Novel of Aesthetic Education in the Mid-Twentieth Century US,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 44.3 (Fall): 382–401

Book Chapters
2018          “The Great American Novel,” in American Literature in Transition, 1970–1980, ed. Kirk Curnutt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.197–209
2017          “Edited for the Old Lady in Dubuque: The Middlebrow Literature of the Midwest,” in The Midwestern Moment: The Forgotten World of Early Twentieth-Century Midwestern Regionalism, vol. 1 of Rediscovering the American Midwest, 3 vols., ed. Jon Lauck (Hastings, NE: Hastings College Press), pp.265–77
2015          “On Blustering: Dwight Macdonald, Modernism, and The New Yorker,” in Writing for The New Yorker: Critical Essays on an American Periodical, ed. Fiona Green (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp.228–48

Book Reviews
2019          “Critique, Tweaked,” review of Timothy Aubry, Guilty Aesthetic Pleasures; Merve Emre, Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America; Hugh McIntosh, Guilty Pleasures: Popular Novels and American Audiences in the Long Nineteenth Century; Vera Tobin, Elements of Surprise: Our Mental Limits and the Satisfactions of Plot, American Literary History 31.3 (Fall): 530–39

Public and Creative Writing
2024          [as Tom Spencer], The Mystery of the Crooked Man [novel] (London: Pushkin Vertigo)
2020          “Vocation for Atheists” [blog post], Vocation Matters: Insights and Conversations from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE), March, https://vocationmatters.org/2020/03/05/vocation-for-atheists/
2019          “One Way To Make College Meaningful” [op.ed.] The New York Times, Feb. 2, p.SR12
2017          [as Tom Spencer], gnomechomsky [short story], (Norwich: Galley Beggar).
2016          ——, “Signs” [short story], THAT 1, March: 96–97.
2015          “Harper Lee’s Bad Form,” review of Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman, Public Books (Sep. 15): http://www.publicbooks.org/fiction/harper-lees-bad-form