INTRODUCTION
Office Hours: MTWR 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Michael Loudon has taught at Eastern for the past twenty-nine years. He completed his AB at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana and his MA and PhD at the State University of New York at Buffalo, writing his doctoral dissertation on William Blake’s The Four Zoas. At EIU, he has taught courses on the British Romantic poets, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, African American literature, Native American literature, Anglophone postcolonial literatures, cultural studies and criticism, and, with colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, the interdisciplinary courses "Cultural Foundations I and II", which survey the sacred texts of the world’s major religions. He studied Ghandian nonviolent resistance in India as an undergraduate, was Fulbright Professor of African American Literature in 1990-91 at the University of the West Indies—St. Augustine in Trinidad, taught at the University of Guam in 2001, and participated in Study Abroad—Cape Town, South Africa in 2007. He was the Faculty Leader for Study Abroad in South Africa in 2009, 2011 and 2013.
Dr. Loudon served as Acting Coordinator of the African American Studies program from 2006-2008. His current research focuses on New Zealand writer Patricia Grace; the experience of Pacific Islanders during WW II; South African literature; memoirs from South Sudan; twentieth-century Korean poetry; and the work of poet Kwame Dawes. His sabbatical research in Fall 2013 examines the juxtaposition of South African personal memoirs with the report of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He enjoys hiking, gardening, writing poetry and listening to the blues.
Michael Loudon has taught at Eastern for the past twenty-nine years. He completed his AB at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana and his MA and PhD at the State University of New York at Buffalo, writing his doctoral dissertation on William Blake’s The Four Zoas. At EIU, he has taught courses on the British Romantic poets, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, African American literature, Native American literature, Anglophone postcolonial literatures, cultural studies and criticism, and, with colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, the interdisciplinary courses "Cultural Foundations I and II", which survey the sacred texts of the world’s major religions. He studied Ghandian nonviolent resistance in India as an undergraduate, was Fulbright Professor of African American Literature in 1990-91 at the University of the West Indies—St. Augustine in Trinidad, taught at the University of Guam in 2001, and participated in Study Abroad—Cape Town, South Africa in 2007. He was the Faculty Leader for Study Abroad in South Africa in 2009, 2011 and 2013.
Dr. Loudon served as Acting Coordinator of the African American Studies program from 2006-2008. His current research focuses on New Zealand writer Patricia Grace; the experience of Pacific Islanders during WW II; South African literature; memoirs from South Sudan; twentieth-century Korean poetry; and the work of poet Kwame Dawes. His sabbatical research in Fall 2013 examines the juxtaposition of South African personal memoirs with the report of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He enjoys hiking, gardening, writing poetry and listening to the blues.
Education & Training
AB, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IndianaMA, State University of Bufflo at New York
PhD, State University of New York at Buffalo