Background
Fred Colby was born on April 23, 1943, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States, to Fred Colby and Miriam Brevard (Tuttle) Hobson.
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
In 1965, Hobson received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in 1972.
Durham, NC 27708, United States
In 1967, Hobson also received a Master of Arts from Duke University.
(The appearance in 1920 of H. L. Mencken's scathing essay ...)
The appearance in 1920 of H. L. Mencken's scathing essay about the intellectual and cultural impoverishment of the South, "The Sahara of the Bozart", set off a firestorm of reaction in the region that continued unabated for much of the next decade.
https://www.amazon.com/Serpent-Eden-H-Mencken-South-ebook/dp/B07176WN9P/?tag=2022091-20
1974
(This collection captures the sense—at times the ordeal—of...)
This collection captures the sense—at times the ordeal—of the 1930s literary experience in America. Fourteen essayists deal with the experience of being a writer in a time of overwhelming economic depression and political ferment, and thereby illuminate the social, political, intellectual, and aesthetic problems and pressures that characterized the experience of American writers and influenced their works.
https://www.amazon.com/Literature-Barricades-American-Writer-1930s/dp/0817300791/?tag=2022091-20
1982
(In this insight-studded work that established him as the ...)
In this insight-studded work that established him as the premier interpreter of southern literary culture, Fred Hobson explores the southern urge toward self-examination, the seeming compulsion of southern writers to discuss their region - some defending it, others damning it. He focuses on fourteen practitioners of the southern genre of regional confession who wrote between 1850 and 1970, showing how they - in many cases linking their own destinies with the fate of the South - produced deeply felt, impassioned books that sought to explain the region to outsiders as well as to fellow southerners, and perhaps most of all to themselves.
https://www.amazon.com/Tell-About-South-Southern-Literary/dp/0807111317/?tag=2022091-20
1983
(Gerald W. Johnson of North Carolina and Baltimore was one...)
Gerald W. Johnson of North Carolina and Baltimore was one of the most prominent American journalists of the twentieth century and one of the outstanding essayists of any age. In South-Watching, Fred Hobson contends that Johnson's most important accomplishment was his role as brilliant critic and interpreter of Southern life during this crucial stage in the making of a modern Southern mind.
https://www.amazon.com/South-Watching-Selected-Johnson-Morrison-Southern-ebook/dp/B07DLFZPRY/?tag=2022091-20
1983
(In The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World Fred Hobso...)
In The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World Fred Hobson offers a witty and engaging "preliminary estimate" of some of the most prominent new figures in southern fiction. Although he discovers no shortage of talent, he does find "various and conflicting attitudes toward the south and the contemporary world." Especially concerned with the relationship of these new writers to their literary predecessors, he traces the continuity - or lack of continuity - of certain attitudes, fictional approaches, and even values that informed southern writing during its earlier flowering in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.
https://www.amazon.com/Southern-Writer-Postmodern-Memorial-Lectures/dp/0820312754/?tag=2022091-20
1991
(Ever in control, H. L. Mencken contrived that future gene...)
Ever in control, H. L. Mencken contrived that future generations would see his life as he desired them to. He even wrote Happy Days, Newspaper Days, and other books to fit the pictures he wanted: first, the carefree Baltimore boy; then, the delighted, exuberant critic of American life.
https://www.amazon.com/Mencken-Life-Fred-Hobson-ebook/dp/B009C8TPDO/?tag=2022091-20
1994
(The Literature of the American South reconsiders southern...)
The Literature of the American South reconsiders southern writing from its seventeenth-century origins to its flourishing present. Featuring the works of eighty-seven classic, contemporary, and newly recovered writers of all genres - poetry, short fiction, drama, novels, autobiography, criticism, sermons, memoirs, journals, and letters - this groundbreaking anthology sheds new light on the creative power of the southern imagination.
https://www.amazon.com/Literature-American-South-Norton-Anthology/dp/0393972704/?tag=2022091-20
1997
(Hobson applies the term "racial conversion narrative" to ...)
Hobson applies the term "racial conversion narrative" to several autobiographies or works of highly personal social commentary by Lillian Smith, Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, James McBride Dabbs, Sarah Patton Boyle, Will Campbell, Larry L. King, Willie Morris, Pat Watters, and other southerners, books written between the mid-1940s and the late 1970s in which the authors - all products of and willing participants in a harsh, segregated society - confess racial wrongdoings and are "converted," in varying degrees, from racism to something approaching racial enlightenment.
https://www.amazon.com/But-Now-See-Conversion-Narrative/dp/0807123846/?tag=2022091-20
1999
editor educator reporter author
Fred Colby was born on April 23, 1943, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States, to Fred Colby and Miriam Brevard (Tuttle) Hobson.
In 1965, Hobson received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in 1972. In 1967, he also received a Master of Arts from Duke University.
From 1969 to 1970, Fred Hobson worked as an editorial writer at Journal and Sentinel in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Then, from 1972 to 1975, he was an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, University, and then an associate professor from 1975 to 1980. He also became a professor of English there.
From 1986 to 1989, Fred also worked as a professor of English at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, then, a professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Lineberger Professor in the Humanities.
In 1982, Hobson became a visiting professor at the University of Hull. He also was a Ford Foundation lecturer at Center for Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, Lamar Memorial Lecturer at Mercer University and Fleming Lecturer at Louisiana State University. He also was a consultant to James Agee Film Project.
Hobson is a co-editor of Southern Review, and Southern Literary Journal, as well as a member of the editorial board of South Atlantic Review, Southern Cultures, and Menckeniana.
(In this insight-studded work that established him as the ...)
1983(Hobson applies the term "racial conversion narrative" to ...)
1999(In The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World Fred Hobso...)
1991(The Literature of the American South reconsiders southern...)
1997(This collection captures the sense—at times the ordeal—of...)
1982(The appearance in 1920 of H. L. Mencken's scathing essay ...)
1974(Ever in control, H. L. Mencken contrived that future gene...)
1994(Gerald W. Johnson of North Carolina and Baltimore was one...)
1983Much of Hobson's writing has dealt with the role of the social and cultural critic in American society, and particularly in the American South.
Hobson was a member of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Southern Texts Society, St. George Tucker Society.
On June 17, 1967, Fred Hobson married Linda V. Whitney. In 1977, they divorced. Hobson has one child, Jane Gregory.