Research Interests
Nell Sullivan's academic interests include the American novel and the literature of the American South. Much of her scholarly work has focused on gender representations in the novels of Cormac McCarthy. Her current research also focuses on the issues of social class and cultural capital in contemporary American fiction.
Publications
"The Excluded Woman in The Road." Carrying the Fire: Cormac McCarthy's The Road and the Apocalyptic Tradition. Casebook Studies in Cormac McCarthy, Volume 4. Ed. Rick Wallach. The Cormac McCarthy Society, forthcoming.
"Cormac McCarthy: Prophesy and Metaphysics." Review of True and Living Prophet of Destruction: Cormac McCarthy and Modernity, Nicholas Monk, and A Bloody and Barbarous God: The Metaphysics of Cormac McCarthy, by Petra Mundik. Western American Literature 52.2 (2017): 213-217.
"The Hacendado's Daughter." Beyond Borders: Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses. Casebook Studies in Cormac McCarthy, Volume 3. Ed. Rick Wallach. Miami, FL: The Cormac McCarthy Society, 2014. 62-74.
"Picturebook Horses: The Problem of Cultural Capital in All the Pretty Horses." Beyond Borders: Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses. Casebook Studies in Cormac McCarthy, Volume 3. Ed. Rick Wallach. Miami, FL: The Cormac McCarthy Society, 2014. 264-273.
"Katherine Dunn's Geek Love and the Vicissitudes of Class." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 54.4 (2013): 410-421.
"The Good Guys: McCarthy's The Road as Post-9/11 Male Sentimental Novel." Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 46.1 (Spring 2013): 79-101.
"Gender in McCarthy's Fiction." Critical Insights: Cormac McCarthy. Ed. David Cremean. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2012. 198-217.
Review of The Western Landscape in Cormac McCarthy and Wallace Stegner: Myths of the Frontier, by Megan Riley McGilchrist. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 8.1 (2010): 88-91.
"Nella Larsen's Passing and the Fading Subject." Twentieth Century Literature Criticism, Vol. 200. Ed. Tom Schoenberg. New York: Gale-Cengage, 2008. 114-24. (Reprint)
"Editor's Column." The Cormac McCarthy Journal 3 (2003): 4-5.
"Academic Constructions of 'White Trash,' or, How to Insult the Lower Classes Without Really Trying." Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Education in America. Ed. Sandra Dahlberg and Vivian Adair. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2003. 53-66.
Review of Dixie Limited: Railroads, Culture, and the Southern Renaissance, by Joseph R. Millichap. Journal of Southern History 69.2 (May 2003): 499.
"Cormac McCarthy and the Text of Jouissance." Sacred Violence, Volume 1: Cormac McCarthy's Appalachian Works. Second Edition. Eds. Wade Hall and Rick Wallach. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2002. 153-61. (Reprint)
Review of Cormac McCarthy's Western Novels, by Barcley Owens. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 2 (2002): 59-60.
"Boys Will Be Boys and Girls Will Be Gone: The Circuit of Male Desire in the Border Trilogy." A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy. Ed. Edwin T. Arnold and Dianne C. Luce. Jackson: U P of Mississippi, 2001. 228-55. (Reprint)
"The Evolution of the Dead Girlfriend Motif in Outer Dark and Child of God." Cormac McCarthy: Myth, Legend, Dust. Ed. Richard Wallach. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester UP, 2000. 68-77.
"Boys Will Be Boys and Girls Will Be Gone: The Circuit of Male Desire in the Border Trilogy." Southern Quarterly 38.3 (Spring 2000): 167-185.
Review of Southern Odyssey: Selected Writings by Sherwood Anderson, edited by Welford Dunaway and Charles E. Modlin. Journal of Southern History 65.1 (February 1999): 193.
"Nella Larsen's Passing and the Fading Subject." African American Review 32.3 (1998): 373-386.
"Righting Irish Poetry: Eavan Boland's Revisionary Struggle." Colby Quarterly 33.4 (December 1997): 334-348.
"Persons in Pieces: Race and Aphanisis in Light in August." Mississippi Quarterly 49.3(1996): 497-517.
"Cormac McCarthy and the Text of Jouissance." Sacred Violence: A Reader's Companion to Cormac McCarthy. Ed. Wade Hall and Rick Wallach. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1995. 115-123.
Awards and Recognitions
Long-Term Faculty Development Leave, University of Houston-Downtown, 2011.
Organized Research Grants, University of Houston-Downtown, 2000, 2010.
UHD Award for Excellence in Professional Service, 2005.
UHD Toastmasters' "Best of the Bayou" Teaching Award, 1997.
Rice Presidential Recognition Award, 1986.
U.S. Presidential Scholar, 1982.