Ren Denton is a scholar-educator with a PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Memphis, where she received rigorous training in scholarship and teaching. Her research and teaching emphasis is American Literature, particularly African American Literature and Southern Literature. Her reading interests gravitate toward texts that draw on the grotesque, magical realism, and Gothic elements. Her work sits at the intersection of literary theory, narratology, and pedagogy, examining what texts teach about power dynamics, historical trauma, cultural practices, and social impact. Her scholarship and pedagogy focus on developing students’ close reading skills, critical and analytical thinking, writing, perspective taking, and ethical reasoning. As a collaborator on the digital humanities project Digital Yoknapatawpha, she has published pedagogical approaches that integrate digital tools with humanistic inquiry, historical thinking, and interpretive analysis. Professor Denton joined Georgia Southern University in 2026.