Education: BA, Wheaton College, 1981; MA, PhD, Northwestern University, 1985. At SPU since 1987.
Specialties: American literature, literary criticism, expository writing
Mark Walhout was born, raised, and educated in northern Illinois. While his fondness for Chicago is undiminished, he is delighted to be living and working in Seattle. He is married with two children.
Dr. Walhout’s fields of study include American literature as well as literary and cultural criticism. His current interests include the life and work of Edward Said, the life of Jesus in modern and contemporary fiction (what Theodore Ziolkowski called “fictionalized biographies of Jesus”), and literary hoaxes, pen names, and plagiarism.
Selected Publications
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Arab Intellectuals and American Power: Edward Said, Charles Malik, and the US in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris, 2020.
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“Burning the Torah: Writing as Betrayal in Four Fictional Gospels,” Literature and Theology 32 (2017).
- “Sealed Eyes and Phantom Lovers: The First Line of ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal.’” The Wordsworth Circle 39 (2008).
- “Liberal Saintliness in William and Henry James.” There Before Us: Religion, Literature, and Culture from Emerson to Wendell Berry. Ed. Roger Lundin. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.
- Literature and the Renewal of the Public Sphere. Co-edited with Susan VanZanten Gallagher. London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin's, 2000.
- “F.O. Matthiessen and the Future of American Studies,” Prospects 22 (1997).
- “Beyond the Wars of Religion: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Desecularize American Education,” Profession (1996): 139-45. With a reply by Gerald Graff.
- “The Intifada of the Intellectuals: An Ecumenical Perspective on the Walzer-Said Exchange.” Postcolonial Literature and the Biblical Call for Justice. Ed. Susan VanZanten Gallagher. Oxford: U of Mississippi P, 1994. Reprinted in Edward Said. Ed. Patrick Williams. 4 vols. London: Sage, 2000.