Peter Kerry Powers

Peter Kerry Powers is currently Dean of the School of the Humanities at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. Though most of his time is spent helping faculty do their work and students solve their problems, he still teaches and pursues his scholarly interests in American literature. His first book, Recalling Religions, looks at the way contemporary ethnic women writers use and transform religious traditions for aesthetic and political purposes. Peter is finishing a book manuscript on Religion and Masculinity in the Harlem Renaissance, and has begun work on a manuscript on the way reading is imagined in contemporary American culture.

Peter was born in Galveston Texas, lived for a while in New Guinea in the South Pacific, and was raised mostly in Oklahoma. He received his B.A. from Wheaton College, an MFA in Creative writing from the University of Montana, and an MA and a PhD from Duke University. He has taught at a number of institutions and has published scholarly and popular articles on multi-ethnic American literature, teaching, religion and culture, and contemporary literature. Peter blogs at http://readwritenow.wordpress.com.