Tom shields teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature—especially focusing on early American and frontier literature—using a variety of approaches, including multiculturalism, aesthetics, rhetoric, and technical and professional communications. He also teaches the undergraduate “Introduction to North Carolina Studies” course and a graduate course in bibliography and research methods. Dr. Shields directs of the Roanoke Colonies Research Office, for which he edits the RoanokeColonies Research Newsletter. He has published essays and reviews on Spanish and English literature and culture of colonial North America, on early North Carolina literature, and on Latin and Hispanic American writers.

Degrees
B.A. Bucknell University
M.A. Western Kentucky University
Ph.D. University of Tennessee

Primary Areas of Research/Teaching
American Literature to 1820 (English, Spanish, Southern, North Carolinian)
Multicultural American Literature
Bibliography and Research Methodologies

Courses Taught
6265: American Literature Special Topics Seminar
6250: American Realism
6005: Bibliography and Methods
4250: American Literature 1865-1920
4200: American Literature 1820-1865
4040: American Literature to 1820 
3610: Human Values in Literature
3420: The Short Story
3270: The Frontier in American Literature
3000: British and American Literary History I
2200: Major American Writers
1200: Composition
1100: Composition
1000: Appreciating Literature

Selected Publications and Presentations
Shields, E. Thomson, Jr., and Charles R. Ewen, eds. Searching for the Roanoke Colonies: An Interdisciplinary Collection. Raleigh: Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 2003.

 “The Genres of Exploration and Conquest Literatures.” A Companion to The Literatures of Colonial America: An Anthology. Ed. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. 353-68.

“North Carolina’s Multicultural Beginnings in History and Lore.” North CarolinaLiterary Review 13 (2004): 7-24.

“Negating Cultures, Saving Cultures: Franciscan Ethnographic Writing in Seventeenth-Century la Florida.” Recovering the U.S Hispanic Literary Heritage. Ed. María Herrera-Sobek and Virginia Sánchez Korrol. Vol. 3. Houston, TX: Arte Público P, 2000. 218-33.

“Teaching Colonial Spanish Material in an Early American Literature Course.” With Dana Nelson. Teaching the Literature of Early America. Ed. Carla Mulford. New York: MLA, 1999. 97-111.

E-mail & Website Links
Roanoke Colonies Research Office
Graduate Literature Homepage
NCST 2000: North Carolina Studies
NCST 4000: Windows on North Carolina's Past