Dr. Taylor Hagood is Professor of American Literature and was a Fulbright Professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany (2009-2010) and FAU Lifelong Learning Society Distinguished Professor of Arts and Letters (2013-2014). A scholar, teacher, and writer of wide-ranging interests and expertise, Professor Hagood teaches a range of courses both in-person and online and has been involved in the digital humanities. His publications include literary criticism, biography, true crime, and creative writing. And he is in-demand as a speaker regionally, nationally, and internationally.

As one of the major scholars in the field of Faulkner studies, Professor Hagood has published and served widely. He held the Francis Bell McCool Dissertation Fellowship in Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi (2004-2005). He also served in several capacities for the William Faulkner Society, first as Representative-at-Large (2009-2012), then as Vice President (2015-2018), and finally as President (2018-2021). He worked as an editor for the NEH-funded  Digital Yoknapatawpha Project  and sits on the Editorial Board of  The Faulkner Journal. From 2018-2021, he wrote the annual review of Faulkner scholarship in  American Literary Scholarship, published by Duke University Press. Along the way, Professor Hagood has published short essays on Faulkner in national and international publications and edited Critical Insights: The Sound and the Fury (2014). And he has written three books on Faulkner:  Faulkner’s Imperialism: Space, Place, and the Materiality of Myth;  Following Faulkner: The Critical Response to Yoknapatawpha’s Architect; and  Faulkner, Writer of Disability, which won the  C. Hugh Holman Award  for Best Book in Southern Literary Studies.

Professor Hagood’s work on Faulkner plays a role in the field of Southern Studies, in which he has also been active. As co-editor of the  H Southern Lit  listserv from 2010-2014, he regularly disseminated developments in the field and moderated online discussions about cutting edge issues. He served as an Executive Council Member for the Society for the Study of Southern Literature (2013-2016). Along with multiple publications in the field, he has worked extensively co-editing volumes in the field with Louisiana State University Press, beginning with  Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture  (2015), a highly impactful volume that spawned a series of articles and books. Five years later, he helped co-edit another book for LSU Press entitled  Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies  (2020).

Aside from the above specializations, Professor Hagood has published on a range of additional topics, including speculative fiction. His publications in African American studies include numerous articles and the book,  Secrecy, Magic, and the One-Act Plays of Harlem Renaissance Women Writers  (2010). Overlapping with that work is Professor Hagood’s work on horror comics such as  Bayou,  The Goon, and  The Walking Dead  and horror generally, with a recent publication on Frankenstein monster masks.

With long-time involvement in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters Ph.D. Program in Comparative Studies, Professor Hagood has embraced interdisciplinary, comparative work that has expanded his fields of focus as well as the genres in which he writes. This work has included not only academic writing but also, increasingly, public-facing, general readership work. To-date, his most significant work in this vein was his biography/true-crime,  Stringbean: The Life and Murder of a Country Music Legend  (2024), the first book on the life and tragic death of Grand Ole Opry banjo player, singer, and comedian, David “Stringbean” Akeman, whose brutal murder in 1973 rocked Nashville and the country music industry. A blend of life-writing, music criticism, and investigative journalism, research for the book included interviews with major music figures and deep combing through court records of a sensational murder case.

Professor Hagood’s second biography was published in August 2025:  Theodore Pratt: A Florida Writer’s Life. Drawing on the Pratt papers in FAU’s Special Collections, this book presents a glimpse into mid-twentieth century south Florida and the man who wrote the locally-famous book,  The Barefoot Mailman,  and the novel that was made into the 1964 live-action-animated feature film,  The Incredible Mr. Limpet, starring Don Knotts. This biography includes information about Pratt’s friendships and correspondence with such Florida figures as Burt Reynolds, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, John D. MacDonald, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Currently, Professor Hagood is continuing to develop as a scholar, writer, and intellectual. In 2024, he published a series of horror stories and over a dozen poems in a range of magazines. He is researching and writing an interdisciplinary theory/philosophy/history of rurality. As a lecturer for general audiences, he speaks across south Florida and the country on topics in literature, art, music, culture, and history.

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