Crowl Professorship recognizes outstanding OHIO English faculty
Paul Jones is OHIO’s second Samuel and Susan Crowl Professor in English Literature. Photo by Max Catalano
For the past three years, Paul Jones has held the title of Ohio University’s Samuel and Susan Crowl Professor in English Literature—a title that has allowed him to more fully pursue his research, engage his students in American literature and carry on the legacy of his colleagues.
The Samuel and Susan Crowl Professorship in English Literature is awarded to a tenured Ohio University faculty member with an established record as an outstanding teacher, productive scholar and active member of the Department of English, the College of Arts and Sciences, or the University. Established in 2011, the endowed professorship is named in honor of retired OHIO Professors Samuel and Susan Crowl.
A scholar of 19th-century American literature, Jones joined the faculty in OHIO’s Department of English in 2002 and is the former director of the department’s graduate program. He has authored two books, “Against the Gallows: Antebellum American Writers and the Movement to Abolish Capital Punishment” (2011) and “Unwelcome Voices: Subversive Fiction in the Antebellum South” (2005), and many articles. Jones was named the second Samuel and Susan Crowl Professor in the summer of 2015.
“It means a lot to me that my colleagues really think I was going to do something good with it—that I was really going to honor the professorship,” Jones said.
The professorship has allowed Jones to immerse himself in his research and special projects, which focus on American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Jones uses Poe’s work as a tool to reel students into his American literature courses and encourage them to read and learn.
“Students always want to talk about Poe,” Jones said. “Often students who know nothing about literature still know something about Poe. They get excited about Poe no matter what, but I always hope that I can use that to get them excited about other things.”
In addition to teaching, Jones is working on a book that explores, through the lens of queer theory, Poe’s interest in characters who have lives that depart from traditional norms. He is also working on another project that uncovers the way contemporary artists and writers have used Poe’s plague story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” to address the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s.
“Fundamentally, I think Edgar Allan Poe stories are all about kind of imagining being different. What ways are you, can you free yourself from normative expectations?” Jones explained. “My book is using his stories to make the argument that he’s very interested in imagining lifestyles or life trajectories that are different, but he’s also very anxious about what it means to not be normal.”
Over the past few years, Jones’ scholarly work has taken him across the world—from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Kyoto, Japan—to research and present his findings. He is preparing to deliver a presentation in Denver next month.
“I just feel so honored to have a professorship that’s named after somebody who is really somebody to live up to,” Jones said.
Samuel Crowl sees just that in the two scholars who have held the title of the professorship that bears his and his wife’s name.
“The guidelines (for the professorship) pretty much said you had to be a wonder person. We’ve been pleased at the two people who have been selected,” Crowl said in a nod to Jones and Marsha Dutton, a retired professor of medieval literature who was OHIO’s first Crowl Professor.
Crowl noted that the selection of Dutton and Jones to receive the professorship is fitting, saying, “My field is the Renaissance, which the medieval period swims into, and Susan’s field was American literature.”
The Crowl Professorship was made possible by endowed gifts to the College of Arts and Sciences through The Ohio University Foundation. Initially funded by the Crowls’ former students, the professorship also is supported by alumni and friends of the college.
“That’s what is great about this,” Crowl said of the professorship. “It’s your former students who thought highly enough and then went on and were successful enough to want to give back, and this is the way they gave back.”