Our Team

John Grammer has taught classes in British and American Literature, American Studies, and Sewanee’s interdisciplinary Humanities Program. His academic research principally concerns the literature and intellectual history of the U.S. South, from the age of Thomas Jefferson to the present. Born and raised in Texas, Professor Grammer received his B.A. at Vanderbilt University and his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia. His 1996 book Pastoral and Politics in the Old South won the C. Hugh Holman Award as the best book of the year in Southern literary study. His essays and reviews have appeared in American Literary History, The Southern Literary Journal, The Sewanee Review and other journals, and in such books as The Dictionary of Literary Biography, The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and Blackwell's Guide to the Literature and Culture of the American South. Prior to directing the Center for Southern Studies, Grammer served as chair of the English Department and Director of the Sewanee School of Letters. 

Hannah Huber is the Center's digital humanities specialist. She advises faculty on digital humanities tools and methods, facilitates digital humanities projects, manages the day-to-day business of the Center, and teaches classes in U.S. literature, textual studies, and digital humanities. She received her PhD in English from the University of South Carolina and served as the postdoctoral research associate for the Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work has appeared in Studies in American Fiction, Studies in American Naturalism, Salem Press's Critical Insights series and The Dictionary of Literary Biography. She is the Editor of Studies in American Naturalism, and her book and digital companion Sleep Fictions: Rest and Its Deprivations in Progressive-Era Literature was published by the University of Illinois Press in the Topics in the Digital Humanities series in November 2023.