William Handley

Tenure Track Appointments

• Associate Professor of English, University of Southern California, 05/01/2002 –
• Assistant Professor of English, University of Southern California, 01/01/1999 – 01/01/2002
• Assistant Professor of Literature and of English and American Literature, Harvard University, 01/01/1995 – 01/01/1999

Summary Statement of Research Interests

My research interests predominantly concern the literature, film, historiography, and culture of the American West, past and present. I have also written about and teach other aspects of British and American literature, particularly modernism and narrative theory.

Contracts and Grants Awarded

• Visiting Scholar, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, $10,000, Spring 2016

Book

• Handley, William R., ed. (Ed.). (2011). The Brokeback Book: From Story to Cultural Phenomenon. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
• Handley, William R, and Nathaniel Lewis (Ed.). (2004). True West: Authenticity and the American West. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
• Handley, W. R. (2002). Marriage, Violence, and the Nation in the American Literary West. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Book Chapters

• Handley, W. R. (2022). “‘The Very Borderland of Our Act’: The Queer West, Historical Violence, and the Intersectional Future.”. The Routledge Companion to Gender and the West pp. 223-240. Routledge Press.
• Handley, W. R. (2015). “A Whole without Transcendence: Isherwood, Woolf, and the Aesthetics of Connection.”. The American Isherwood pp. 63-78. University of Wisconsin Press.
• Handley, W. R. (2011). “The Pasts and Futures of a Story and a Film”. (Vol. The Brokeback Book) pp. 1-23.. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
• Handley, W. R. (2009). “The Popular Western” in ‘A Companion to the Modern American Novel’, ed. John T. Matthews. (Vol. 10) pp. 437-453.. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Handley, W. R. (2007). “The Vanishing American (1925)” in *America First: Naming the Nation in U.S. Film*, ed. Mandy Merck. pp. 44-64.. Routledge.
• Handley, W. R. (2004). Willa Cather: “The West Authentic,” The West Divided. pp. p. 72-94.. Lincoln, NE: True West: Authenticity and the American West/University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• Handley, W. R. (2004). “Freeways in the City of Angels” in *Working Sites: Texts, Territories, and Cultural Capital in American Cultures*, eds. William Boelhower and John Leo. pp. p. 178-207.. University of Amsterdam Press.
• Handley, W. R. (2003). “Wister’s Omniscience and Omissions” in ‘Reading The Virginian in the New West.’ Eds. Melody Graulich and Stephen Tatum. pp. p. 39-71.. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
• Handley, W. R. (1993). The Ethics of Subject Creation in Bakhtin and Lacan. pp. p. 144-162.. Mikhail Bakhtin: Carnival and Other Subjects/Rodopi Press.
• Handley, W. R. (1991). “War and the Politics of Narration in Jacob’s Room” in ‘Virginia Woolf and War: Fiction, Reality, and Myth’. Ed. Mark Hussey. pp. p. 110-133.. Syracuse University Press.

Encyclopedia Article

• Handley, W. R. (2004). “Western Fiction” in Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, ed. Jay Parini. Vol. 4, 334-343. University of Oxford Press.

Journal Article

• Handley, W. R. (2019). Re-Viewing Western U.S. Rephotography in the Anthropocene. KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time. Vol. 19.2 (2019), pp. 153-187.
• Handley, W. R. (2005). Detecting the Fictions of History in *Watershed*. Callaloo/Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. p. 305-312.
• Handley, W. R. (2004). Belonging(s): Plural Marriage, Gay Marriage, and the Subversion of ‘Good Order’. Discourse/Wayne State University Press. pp. p. 85-109.
• Handley, W. R. (2001). Distinctions without Differences: Zane Grey and the Mormon Question. Arizona Quarterly/University of Arizona. Vol. 57, pp. 1, 1-33..
• Handley, W. R. (1995). The House a Ghost Built: Nommo, Allegory, and the Ethics of Reading in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Contemporary Literature/University of Wisconsin Press. Vol. 36, pp. 4, 676-701..
• Handley, W. R. (1994). The Housemaid and the Kitchen Table: Incorporating the Frame in To the Lighthouse. Twentieth Century Literature/Hofstra University. Vol. 40, pp. 1, 15-41..

• Susan J. Rowsowski Award for Outstanding Teaching and Mentorship, Western Literature Association, Fall 2016
• Wylder Award for Exceptional Service to the Western Literature Association, Fall 2014
• USC-Mellon Mentoring Award, Spring 2014
• USC Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund Award, , 2000-2001
• Huntington Library Research Fellowship Recipient, Keck and Mayers Fellowship, 1998

Administrative Appointments

• Executive Secretary and Treasurer, Western Literature Association, 11/2021 – 10/2024
• Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS), 08/16/2022 – 08/15/2023
• Director of Graduate Admissions, Dept. of English, 09/2019 – 08/2022

Administative Appointment

• Director of Graduate Admissions and Recruitment, Department of English, 2007 – 2011
• Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of English, 2003 – 2005

Editorships and Editorial Boards

• General Editor, “Postwestern Horizons” Book Series for the University of Nebraska Press, 2002 –

Professional Offices

• Executive Secretary and Treasurer, Western Literature Association, 2010 – 2014
• President, Western Literature Association, 2004-2005