Jan Whitt is a professor of journalism, literature and media studies. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American and British literature, literary journalism, media studies, popular culture, professional writing and women’s studies.
Having begun her career as a reporter and editor in Texas, Whitt is author of Dangerous Dreams: Essays on American Film and Television, Rain on a Strange Roof: A Southern Literary Memoir, Burning Crosses and Activist Journalism: Hazel Brannon Smith and the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Settling the Borderland: Other Voices in Literary Journalism, Women in Journalism: A New History and Allegory and the Modern Southern Novel.
Forthcoming is The Redemption of Narrative: Terry Tempest Williams and Her Vision of the West, to be followed by a book about Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.
She holds a BA in English and journalism and an MA in English from Baylor University, and a PhD in English from the University of Denver.