Palmer appointed interim chairman of English department at Clemson

Published: July 27, 2010

R. Barton Palmer image by: Clemson University

CLEMSON — R. Barton Palmer, Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature and director of Clemson’s film studies program, has been named interim chairman of the English department. The department has 75 full- and part-time faculty and staff members and is home to Clemson’s undergraduate programs in English and writing, as well as graduate programs in English and professional communication.

Palmer succeeds Lee Morrissey, who stepped down as chairman this summer to accept a Fulbright fellowship in Ireland. Palmer joined Clemson’s faculty in 1995 and has served previously as the department chairman. He holds undergraduate degrees from Dartmouth College and the University of Durham, as well as master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University in medieval studies and New York University in film studies.

Palmer maintains a high research profile both as a medievalist, specializing in late medieval English/French literary relations, and also as a film scholar, with a particular interest in classic Hollywood and international cinema. He is the author, editor or general editor of almost 50 books on various literary and film subjects. Palmer also is the founding and general editor of book series at four university presses.

A prize-winning editor and translator of 14th-century French poetry, he has published volumes on, among other subjects, the Coen Brothers, film noir, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Steven Soderbergh, John Frankenheimer, Tennessee Williams, Harper Lee and Alfred Hitchcock. In 2008, he had an academic residency at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. Recently, the medieval research team he co-directs with a musicologist colleague at the University of Exeter was awarded a $350,000 grant from the Leverhulme Foundation to support the production of an innovative conventional and digital edition of the poetry and music of Guillaume de Machaut.

As interim chairman, Palmer is eager “to help guide the English department in a time of profound challenge that also offers unique opportunities for continuing improvement in our teaching, service and, especially, research missions.”

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