John Gatta, Visiting professor of English and Humanities, the University of the South
John Gatta is currently a visiting professor of English and humanities at Sewanee, having previously served for some years as professor and English Department Head at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He is the author of three books and around fifty other publications, most of them concerned with the interplay between religious faith and literary imagination in America. His first book, a critical study of the colonial New England poet Edward Taylor, won the 1989 Academic Book-of-the-Year Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature. His second book, American Madonna: Images of the Divine Woman in Literary Culture (Oxford University Press) was named an “outstanding academic book” for 1998 by editors of Choice . His latest book publication, also from Oxford University Press, is Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present .
Gatta has, in addition, served as a member of the national working group, supported by the Pew Foundation, on Religion and Literature in America and is heading a special task force that is studying the religious identity of the University, which has been in operation over the course of the past Easter 2006 Semester.