Robert Dale Parker
Professor, English

Office: English Department
329 English Building MC 718
Phone: (217) 333-1606
E-mail: rparker1@uiuc.edu
Web Page

Robert Dale Parker is a Professor of English and has written about a variety of topics in American literature and critical theory, including two books on the fiction of William Faulkner, a book on the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, and—more recently—The Invention of Native American Literature, Cornell University Press, 2003.  In 2001 and 2003, he was Chair of the Executive Committee of the Modern Language Association Division on American Indian Literatures.  At Illinois, he has taught courses across a wide range of topics in American literature and critical theory, including courses in American Indian literature for both undergraduates and graduate students.  His current research focuses on early American Indian writing.  Some of that research appears in an edition of the first known American Indian literary writer: The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

The Sound the Stars Make has been selected as a Michigan Notable Book for 2008.

Schoolcraft on the radio: On Tuesday, February 27, Celeste Quinn of the Afternoon Magazine, WILL radio (Urbana, Illinois), interviewed Robert Parker about Schoolcraft and The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky. You can hear the archived broadcast.