Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson teaches courses in American literature, literary theory, multicultural literature, and African American literature. Recent courses include African American Literature and Culture, Popular Genres, The Splendid Drunken Twenties, and Contemporary Native American Literature and Film. He has also taught courses on the topic of The Walking Dead and claims to be the English Department’s resident expert on surviving the Zombie Apocalypse. Dr. Johnson’s primary research area is African American Literature. His publications include Black Masculinity and the Frontier Myth in American Literature and Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos: Conceptions of the African American West. He is also the author of a biography of African American singer Taylor Gordon, Can’t Stand Still: Taylor Gordon and the Harlem Renaissance (University Press of Mississippi, 2019).

Degrees

• 1997 PhD University of Kansas
• 1992 MA University of Kansas
• 1987 BA University of Tennessee