Randolph P. Shaffner

Randolph "Ran" Preston Shaffner, a 1940 native of Winston-Salem, N.C., has been teaching, writing, and publishing professionally since the 1960s. His fields of interest have ranged from world literature and literary criticism to nonfiction, history, poetry, and biography.

He attended Davidson College and earned his degree in English with honors in writing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He went on at Chapel Hill to complete his master's and doctorate in comparative literature, specializing in European Romanticism. He studied German as a Goethe Institute Scholar through the German Embassy in Munich and French at the University of Besançon.

He taught English as a Foreign Language for the U.S. Peace Corps in Thailand at Damrongrartsongkroh School in Chiengrai and at Kasetsart University in Bangkok. He taught English and French at St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Virginia; English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; English and World Literature at Fairfield University in Connecticut; and Great Books in Highlands, N.C., for Western Carolina University at Cullowhee.

His publications include a world survey of the Apprenticeship Novel and several books, articles, and DVDs on a variety of historical subjects, for which he has received book and multimedia awards from the North Carolina Society of Historians and the American Association for State and Local History. He has authored several National Register and North Carolina Historical Highway Marker nominations. His more than seventy lectures, delivered at public and private venues, have focused primarily on historical, literary, religious, and occasional topics.