Florence Dore

Florence Dore is a Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, affiliated with the College of Arts and Sciences. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (1999) and a BA from Wesleyan University (1987, Phi Beta Kappa). Her research bridges literature, music, and cultural studies, focusing on American modernism, Southern literature, and the intersections between rock music and narrative. Dore is a recipient of the 2024 Board of Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and has held fellowships at institutions including the National Humanities Center and NYU’s Draper Program. Her major works include Novel Sounds: Southern Fiction in the Age of Rock and Roll (2018) and The Ink in the Grooves (2022), exploring music-literature crossovers. Beyond academia, she is a musician with albums like Highways and Rocketships (2022) and has organized public humanities projects such as Ink in the Grooves Live and the Cover Charge benefit compilation.

Her scholarship emphasizes aesthetic depth amid post-critical trends, arguing for literature’s non-instrumental value. Dore’s work on Lorrie Moore and maternal aesthetics in A Gate at the Stairs critiques institutional critiques of literature while affirming beauty’s role in climate change discourse. She has also contributed to interdisciplinary conferences on rock music and literature, blending academic rigor with public engagement. Grants include NEH funding, and she co-edited the Post45 Book Series at Stanford University Press.