Dr. McHaney researches and teaches twentieth-century American prose (fiction, essay, drama) and poetry from an American Studies point of view. The cultural contexts revealed through art, music, history, and biography inform her teaching. While the writings of Eudora Welty are the primary focus of Dr. McHaney's research and publications, she has also written and/or lectured on William Faulkner, Barry Hannah, David Mamet, Alice Munro, Natasha Trethewey, and Tennessee Williams. She has given invited lectures on Welty and others in the U. S. and in France, Norway, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic. The courses that Dr. McHaney teaches are varied: Literature and Culture of the Harlem Renaissance, Asian American Literature, Literary Perspectives of New York City, Welty's Cosmos, Race, Rights, and Resistance: Literature of the American South and South Africa, Twentieth-century American Poetry, Children's and Young Adults' Literature.

Dr. McHaney advises English majors with the Secondary English Concentration and prospective teachers in the College of Education's M.A.T. TEEMS English Education program. She teaches the Senior Seminar for Secondary English and topics classes such as American Literary Classics in the Secondary Classroom. Dr. McHaney brings the experience of teaching middle and high school English for twelve years before coming to Georgia State University to her role as Chair (2006-2007, 2008-2009) and Chair-Elect (2005-2006, 2007-2008) of the Professional Education Faculty.

Her current projects include Georgia: Her History and Literature, an anthology for the state's eighth-grade language arts and history students, (Carolina Academic Press); Eudora Welty as Photographer which will have essays by leading photography curators and thirty photographs by Welty never before published (U Mississippi P, 2009); and a book-length study of Welty's photographs and prose on the intersections of race, gender, and authority. She is the editor of the Eudora Welty Newsletter (1977 -) edited and published at Georgia State since 1998. Several graduate students have published articles in the Newsletter and/or have assisted in its production.

With support from the Georgia Center for the Book, the Georgia Humanities Council, and the NEH We the People grants, Dr. Pearl McHaney has presented nine public library lectures across Georgia in celebration of Eudora Welty's Centennial.

She has also edited Eudora Welty as Photographer with essays by McHaney,

Sandra Phillips and Deborah Willis. Jackson: U P Mississippi, 2009. 40 Photographs by Welty, 30 not previously published.

Occasions: Selected Writings by Eudora Welty. 60+ uncollected fiction and nonfiction. Jackson: U P Mississippi, 2009.

Eudora Welty Centennial Issue: Mississippi Quarterly, April 2009. 9 essays and Primary and Secondary Eudora Welty Checklist 1986-2008.

In April the English department also launched the Eudora Welty Review under the editorial team of Pearl McHaney, Malinda Snow, Lori Howard, and Elizabeth Crews . 27 essays reprinted from

the 32 years of the Eudora Welty Newsletter, edited and published at GSU since 1997. the Eudora Welty

Review is annual journal publishing peer-reviewed critical essays.

"Eudora Welty." Prospects for the Study of American Literature (II). Ed. Richard Kopley and Barbara Cantalupo. Brooklyn: AMS Press, Inc. 2009. 304-323.

Selected Publications:



Eudora Welty: Contemporary Reviews. Editor. American Critical Archives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

A Writer's Eye: Collected Book Reviews by Eudora Welty. Editor, with Introduction. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.

"Prospects for the Study of Eudora Welty." Prospects for the Study of American Literature II. Ed. Richard Kopley and Barbara Cantalupo. New York: AMS Press, 2008. Forthcoming.

"Contextual Space in Eudora Welty's 'Livvie.'" The Art of Brevity II: Further Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis. Ed. Per Winther. 2008. Forthcoming.

"A Transnational Reading of Eudora Welty's Losing Battles and Sindiwe Magona's Mother to Mother." Southern Literary Journal. Forthcoming Spring 2008.