Department Head and Associate Professor, Humanities

Year Started

2015

Education

Ph.D. in English, Stony Brook University
M.A. in English, St. John's University
B.A. in English, St. John's University

Teaching Interests

Composition
Literature
Technical and Professional Communication
Humanities Sea Practical

Research Interests

African American Studies
Literary Modernism
Italo Calvino
Jazz Studies
Cinema Studies
 

Biography

Dr. Paul Devlin is a scholar of American literature, specializing in African American literature of the twentieth century. His edited books include Ralph Ellison in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). With Henry Louis Gates, Jr., he is the co-editor of Albert Murray: Collected Novels and Poems (Library of America, 2018) and Albert Murray: Collected Essays and Memoirs (Library of America, 2016). Dr. Devlin has published peer-reviewed articles in American Studies, African American Review, Film & History, Archives of American Art Journal, Literature of the Americas, and elsewhere. He has also contributed chapters to various books, including Something Over Something Else: Romare Bearden’s Profile Series (University of Washington Press, 2019), Approaches to Teaching the Work of Ralph Ellison (Modern Language Association, 2024), and August Wilson in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2025). His public writing has appeared in Slate, San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times Book Review, Bomb Magazine, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal, Popular Mechanics, and The New Criterion, among other outlets. Electives he has taught include Melville and His World, Introduction to Jazz Studies, The Podcast: Focusing on the BBC’s In Our Time, and Books by Directors: Bresson, Lumet, Tarantino, Rodriguez.

Dr. Devlin has been a consultant for Jazz at Lincoln Center, National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and The American Writers Museum in Chicago. In terms of national-level service to the profession, he has served on a standing committee of the Modern Language Association (2016-19), as a referee for several journals and presses, and as an external evaluator for tenure and promotion. He has served as book review editor of African American Review (Johns Hopkins University Press) since 2017. He is a peer-evaluator for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.