Rate My Professor Adam Wood

Dr. Adam Wood is Department Head and Professor of English at Valdosta State University, where he assumed leadership of the department in the summer of 2021, succeeding Dr. Donna Sewell. Prior to this appointment, he served as Chair and Professor of English at Georgia College & State University. Previously, at Salisbury University in Maryland, Wood was Professor and Department Chair, longstanding chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, Faculty Senator, and President of the Faculty Senate for one year. He earned his Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from Georgia State University. Wood has demonstrated strong administrative leadership across multiple institutions, contributing to faculty governance, academic freedom initiatives, and departmental development.

Dr. Wood's primary research specialization is American Literary Naturalism, with focused scholarship on authors including Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Cormac McCarthy. He maintains an extensive publishing record of articles on literary Naturalism and has presented widely in this field. As President of the Frank Norris Society, he plays a key role in advancing studies of this author and genre. His pedagogical interests span American Modernism, American Postmodernism, Violence in the American Novel, the Experimental American Novel, the Transgressive American Novel, and multiethnic literature prior to 1900. Dr. Wood serves as a public intellectual, appearing regularly as an expert on Delmarva Public Radio’s “Writer’s Edition” to discuss literature, American culture and politics, the humanities, and free speech in academia. At Valdosta State University, he mentors graduate students, as seen in his faculty mentorship in the Graduate Student Research & Scholarship Symposium.