Whitney Shylee May

I am an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of English at Texas State University. My primary research interests include the Gothic and nineteenth-century horror literature, as well as depictions of the carnivalesque in horror fiction and in popular culture. My edited volume Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King's IT appeared with the University Press of Mississippi in 2022. My other work has been published in Gothic Studies, Children's Literature, The Edgar Allan Poe Review, and Supernatural Studies, as well as in Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters (Lexington Books, 2021), Displaced: Literature of Indigeneity, Migration, and Trauma (Routledge, 2020), The Big Top on the Big Screen: Explorations of the Circus on Film (McFarland Press, 2020), and Representing Kink: Fringe Sexuality and Textuality in Literature, Digital Narrative, and Popular Culture (Lexington Books, 2019).

Experience

  • 2024–present
    Associate Professor of Instruction, Texas State University
  • 2015–2024
    Lecturer, Texas State University

Education

  • 2025 
    University of Texas, Doctor of Philosophy
  • 2015 
    Texas State University, Master's of Arts in Literature

Contact Whitney for

  • General
  • Media request
  • Speaking request
  • Consulting / Advising
  • Research collaboration
  • Research supervision