Although I specialize in the blues tradition—music, literature, culture—I teach a broad array of introductory and more advanced courses in American literature and the Southern Studies program.
Research Interests
My current research interests vary widely, from the archive of 20th century blues recordings that explicitly thematize cotton and the process through which the blues were globalized, to the problematics of racial representation in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, to images of the postmodern pastoral South in Buddy Jewell’s country music hit, “Sweet Southern Comfort.” My forthcoming book, Where We Are Now, mixes memoir with cultural criticism to explore the way that my interracial family in contemporary Mississippi and other contemporary instantiations of beloved community challenge fundamentalist conceptions of social justice that reify race and harden the color line.
Biography
Adam Gussow is a professor of English and Southern Studies. A member of the University of Mississippi faculty since 2002, he teaches courses in American and African American literature, the blues tradition, southern autobiography, the literature and culture of running, and related areas. He has published a number of books on the blues, including Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition (2002), winner of the Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, and Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition (2017), which won the Cawelti Award from the American Culture Association / Popular Culture Association and was voted “Best Blues Book of 2017” by the readership of Living Blues. His new book, Where We Are Now: Renewing the Dream of Beloved Community will be published by Emancipation Books in the spring of 2025.
Gussow’s articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in American Literature, African American Review, Southern Cultures, Callaloo, Quillette, boundary 2, Popular Music and Society, The Global South, and many other publications.
In addition to his academic credentials, Gussow is a professional harmonica player and teacher. As a member of the blues duo Satan and Adam for more than 30 years, he has been featured on the cover of Living Blues magazine and was recently profiled in the documentary Satan & Adam, which screened on Netflix for several years.
Publications
Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music (University of North Carolina Press, 2020),
Journeyman’s Road: Modern Blues Lives From Faulkner’s Mississippi to Post-9/11 New York (University Press of Tennessee, 2007),
Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 2002),
Mister Satan’s Apprentice: A Blues Memoir (Pantheon, 1998; Vintage, 2000; new edition, University of Minnesota Press, 2009)
Courses Taught
- SST 101 Introduction to Southern Studies I
- SST 103 Southern Mythologies and Popular Culture
- SST 118 Introductory Topics in Southern Music: The Blues
- SST 402 Southern Studies Seminar: Culture
- SST 598 Southern Studies - Special Topics II
- SST 601 Southern Studies Graduate Seminar I
- SST 602 Southern Studies Graduate Seminar I
- ENG 223 Survey of American Lit to the Civil War
- ENG 224 Survey of American Lit since Civil War
- ENG 342 African American Lit Survey Since 1920
- ENG 352 Studies in Contemporary Literature: American Road Narratives
- ENG 367 Blues Tradition in American Literature
- ENG 393 Studies in Popular Culture: The Literature and Culture of Running
- ENG 686 Studies in Genre: Slave and Neo-Slave Narratives
- ENG 692 Cultural Studies: The Blues Tradition
- ENG 776 Studies in Southern Literature: Worrying the Color-Line in Southern and Post-Southern
Education
B.A. English, Princeton University (1979)
M.A. English, Columbia University (1984)
Ph.D. English, Princeton University (2000)