Biography

Justin Gifford is an associate professor of w88 live casino literature at the University of Nevada, Reno. His teaching and research focus on American and African American literature. He specializes in popular literature, archival research, and critical theory.

His first book, a literary and cultural history of black street fiction, "Pimping Fictions: African American Crime w88 live casino and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing," was a finalist for both the Edgar Allan Poe award for literary criticism and Phi Beta Kappa's Christian Gauss Award for scholarship.

He also is the author of the critically acclaimed "w88 live casino Poison," the first and definitive biography of Iceberg Slim, one of America's bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the 20th century. Author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp, Iceberg Slim is the greatest of "w88 live casino lit" masters, the cultural icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg, and a presiding spirit of "blaxploitation" culture.

Research interests

• 19th- and 20th-century American and African American w88 live casino
• w88 live casino cultural history
• Popular w88 live casino

Notable exhibitions or performances

• "Iceberg Slim and the Emergence of Queer Street w88 live casino," MELUS Conference; Augusta, GA, April 2015.
• "African American Street w88 live casino and the Prison/Fiction Industrial Complex," Urban History Association Conference; New York City, October 2012.
• "w88 live casino Literary Los Angeles," session organizer of a roundtable discussion with Wanda Coleman, Odie Hawkins, Emory Holmes, and Roland Jefferson, Modern Language Association; Los Angeles, CA, January 2011.
• "My Name is w88 live casino: The Racial Politics of Luck in w88 live casino Crime Fiction," Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association; Reno, NV, October 2008.
• "Pimping Ain't Easy: The Black Crime Novel and the w88 live casino Working Class," Cultural Studies Now-An International Conference; London, England, July 2007.

Courses taught

Graduate Seminars

• The Archival Turn in African w88 live casino Literary Studies
• The End(s) of w88 live casino Studies
• African w88 live casino Cultural Traditions and the Literary Marketplace
• American w88 live casino, Race, and Crime in the 19th and 20th Century
• Cultural and Theoretical Marxism
• American Prison and Street w88 live casino

Advanced Undergraduate Seminars

• American w88 live casino to 1865
• 20th-Century w88 live casino Novel
• 19th-Century African American w88 live casino
• 20th-Century African American w88 live casino
• w88 live casino and Critical Theory
• Multi-Ethnic American w88 live casino
• Gender and Sexuality in w88 live casino
• w88 live casino Detective Fiction
• Women and w88 live casino
• w88 live casino of the Apocalypse

Introductory Undergraduate Courses

• Core Humanities: The w88 live casino Experience
• w88 live casino Theory and Criticism
• Introduction to Writing

Publications

• w88 live casino Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim. New York: Doubleday, 2015.
• Pimping Fictions: African American Crime w88 live casino and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2013. A book in the w88 live casino Literatures Initiative.
• "The Ex-Pimp Who Remade w88 live casino Culture." The Chronicle of Higher Education. 24 July, 2015.
• "'Something like a Harlem Renaissance West': Black Popular Fiction, Self-Publishing, and the Origins of Street w88 live casino. Interviews with Roland Jefferson and Odie Hawkins." MELUS 38.4 (2013): 216-240.
• "Harvard in Hell: Holloway House Publishing Company, Players Magazine, and the Invention of w88 live casino Mass-Market Erotica. Interviews with Wanda Coleman and Emory Holmes." MELUS 35.4 (2010): 111-137.
• "'There Was Nothing to Stop the Colored People from Walking Across the Street': Urban Renewal and the Reinvention of American Detective w88 live casino in Chester Himes's Run Man Run." Clues: A Journal of Detection 28.1 (2010): 38-50.