Harriet Pollack

Harriet Pollack is an Adjunct Professor of American Literature at the College of Charleston. Her research examines the body in southern literature and photography through lenses of cultural trauma and historical context. She has authored Eudora Welty's Fiction and Photography: The Body of the Other Woman (2016) and edited eight volumes, including Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden in Plain Sight (2023) and Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race (2013). She founded the Critical Perspectives On Eudora Welty book series in 2019 and serves as its ongoing editor.

Research Focus: Pollack's work bridges southern history, race studies, and literary analysis, with emphasis on:

• Deconstructing cultural trauma in southern narratives
• Intersections of photography and textual storytelling
• Mystery fiction as social critique
• Eudora Welty's unpublished manuscripts and family archives

Her recent publications explore Welty's use of mystery tropes to investigate whiteness and genre evolution, reflecting sustained scholarly innovation since the 1990s.

Awards & Honors:

• Eudora Welty Review Research Grant (2023)
• Eudora Welty Society Phoenix Award for outstanding scholarship (2008)
• Kirby Best Essay Prize (1998)

Leadership: Twice president of the Welty Society (2018-2020), she organized three international conferences and serves on the board of the Society for The Study of Southern Literature. She was external examiner for Swarthmore College (2018-2022) and book review editor for Southern Literary Journal (2008-2016).