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Karl Zender Professor of English

Karl Zender was born in the hills of Southern Ohio, a region to which he occasionally dreams of returning. He was educated at Case Institute of Technology, Western Reserve University, and the University of Iowa. He has taught at Washington University in St. Louis, at the University of Vienna (as a "Gastprofessor"), and, since 1973, at the University of California at Davis; he served as chair of the department from 1993 to 1998. His wife, Lynn, is a psychiatric social worker and a tireless advocate of services for the homeless. They have two grown sons and two lovely grandsons, who along with their parents live (alas!) in faraway New Jersey. Karl Zender's main research and teaching interests are the fiction of William Faulkner and the drama of William Shakespeare. He is currently working on a book-length study of relations between the generations in Shakespeare's late plays.

Publication Spotlight

Faulkner and the Politics of Reading by Karl Zender Part of Louisiana State University Press's prestigious Southern Literary Studies series, Faulkner and the Politics of Reading offers fresh readings of individual novels, themes, and motifs while also assessing the impact of recent politicized interpretations on an understanding of William Faulkner's fiction. The book was selected as an "Outstanding Academic Title for 2003" by Choice magazine.