Master Class: at the University of Texas at Austin, I teach a course on Southwestern literature--a genre that didn't exist until J. Frank Dobie put it on the map. (on Books).

Publication: Texas Monthly

Publication Date: 01-JAN-03

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WITH THE LATEST INSTALLMENT OF THE TEXAS BOOK Festival in the barn, it is perhaps a good time to look back at the invention of Southwestern literature--that is, at its conception as a recognizable body of writing with its own characteristic features and canonical authors. At the tail end of the twenties, J. Frank Dobie proposed a new course to be taught in the Department of English at the University of Texas. A lowly instructor with a master's degree and no aspirations to acquire a doctorate, Dobie wanted to offer a course on Southwestern literature. Immediately, he ran into strong opposition. As the story goes, the full professors in the department solemnly declared that there was no such thing. Dobie's riposte became part of his legend: "Well, there's plenty of life in the Southwest, so I'll just teach the life." Dobie, incidentally, did not have much use for Ph.D's, arguing in 1942 that in their theses they "merely transfer bones from one graveyard to another."

To be fair, the old dons in the English department had a point. In 1929 American literature itself was only beginning to challenge the dominance of British and classical literature in the nation's colleges and universities. Certainly the concept of the Southwest as a literary region would have been a hard sell to professors who were...

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