Dr. Zackary Vernon

Dr. Zackary Vernon specializes in American literature and film. In particular, his work examines the intersections among environmental activism, philosophy, film and literature – from romanticism to the present. He has been teaching in Appalachian State University’s Department of English since 2015, having  previously taught at Merrimack College and UNC-Chapel Hill.

Literary works can be powerful agents of change, he says, noting the cultural shifts and legislative changes that have occurred around such works as Rachel Carson’s 1962 non-fiction book “Silent Spring,” about the scientific research on DDT and other cancer-causing pesticides, or Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” about climate change and similar documentaries about other global issues. Vernon also has an abiding interest in studying the literary, cultural and material history of the American South and the emerging literary genre known as “Grit Lit,” in which a “rough,” often working-class South is romanticized.

Vernon actively researches environmental and agricultural issues, and his book “Food on the Fringe: Adventures in Eating at the End of the World” is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press. He is also the co-editor of “Summoning the Dead: Critical Essays on Ron Rash” (University of South Carolina Press, 2018) and “Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies” (Louisiana State University Press, 2019).

Areas of expertise

• Literature: Contemporary, Southern, Appalachian and 19th- and 20th-century American Literatures; Transatlantic Modernism and Postmodernism
• Cinema: post-1945; environmental cinema; documentary; Southern cinema
• Ecocriticism
• (Bio)Regionalism
• Queer theory
• Gender studies
• Disability studies
• Southern studies
• Cultural studies and history
• Regional studies, southern and Appalachian
• Environmental studies, environmental activism and environmental history