Professor / Graduate Faculty
Ph.D. 1997, Vanderbilt University

Fields of interest:
20th Century American Literature and Culture; Children's Literature; American Studies; Cultural Studies; Gender and Women's Studies.

Philip Nel is the author of The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (Random House, 2007), Dr. Seuss: American Icon (Continuum, 2004), The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks (University Press of Mississippi, 2002), and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter Novels: A Reader's Guide (Continuum, 2001). With Julia Mickenberg he is coeditor of Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature (NYU Press, 2008). Crockett Johnson's Magic Beach, with an Afterword by Nel and an Appreciation by Maurice Sendak, was published in 2005. Nel's essays can be found in the journals American Art, Children's Literature, Comic Art, Contemporary Literature, Critique, Cultural Studies, The Lion and the Unicorn, Modern Fiction Studies, Mosaic, The Journal of Popular Culture, and in the edited collections A New Literary History of America, The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon, Harry Potter's World: Multidisciplinary Perspectives revised edition, Approaches to Teaching DeLillo's White Noise, The Cambridge Companion to Don DeLillo, and The Norton Guide to Field Writing with Readings and Handbook. Currently, Nel is working on Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: A Biography (under contract with UP Mississippi) and Keywords for Children's Literature (under contract with NYU Press, coedited with Lissa Paul).

Nel is Director of the English Department's Program in Children's Literature. He also serves as webmaster for the Don DeLillo Society, the Crockett Johnson Homepage, and is co-webmaster (with Naomi Wood) of the website you're visiting now.

Photo credit: Dane Webster

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