College of Arts and Sciences

Assistant Professor of English
Phone: (239)590-7504
E-Mail: dharriso@fgcu.edu
Office: RH 133

Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis, 2005
A.M., Washington University in St. Louis, 2001
B.A., University of Missouri-St. Louis, 1998

Primary Teaching Areas: American literature and culture, especially American religious thought, experience, and psychology

Research focus: contemporary evangelical culture and theology, gospel music and culture, sexuality and gender, technology and higher education.

Professor Harrison’s research focuses on the strategies religious subcultures use to accommodate change, and at the same time preserve traditional values and practices. He is particularly interested in the way Protestant, fundamentalist evangelicalism interacts with modern American life. His current book project explores this dynamic within southern, white gospel music and culture. In addition to working in his primary fields, Professor Harrison also cultivates an interest in academic technology: he was the founding director of the Hurst Digital Archive at Washington University, and in 2008, he was awarded the National Education Association’s Excellence in the Academy prize for New Scholars, for his essay on blogging and the professoriate.

Publications:

• No Body There: Notes on the Queer Migration to Cyberspace.” Journal of Popular Culture. 43.2, (April), 2010.
• "Southern Gospel Sissies: Gay Men, Evangelical Music, and the Plays of Del Shores.” Journal of Men, Masculinity, and Spirituality. 3.2 (June), 2009, 123-142.
• “Scholarly Voice and Professional Identity in the Internet Age.” Thought and Action, 24 (Fall 2008), 23-33.
• “Why Southern Gospel Music Matters.” Religion and American Culture. 18.1 (Winter 2008), 27-58.
• “The Will in Contemporary Evangelicalism: Or How (Not) To Domesticate Jonathan Edwards.” Journal of the M/MLA. 39.1 (Spring 2006), 1-13.
• “Narcissism, Apocalypse, and Shelley’s Critique of Canonical History in ‘Alastor.’” Essays in Romanticism, (Spring 2003), 37-64.
• “The Long Poem of Walking: Spatial Organization and Pedestrian Speech Acts in ‘Piers Plowman.’” AntiThesis 12, (Spring 2002), 192-217.