Laura Schrock Crawford began teaching at Samford in the Core Texts Program in 2021 and is currently serving as a visiting assistant professor of English with a teaching emphasis in Core Writing. Prior to coming to Samford, she served as English Department Head and Humanities and Fine Arts Division chair at Judson College until its closure in 2021. Crawford completed her PhD at the University of Mississippi, her master's at Baylor University and her bachelor's at the University of Mobile. Her current research and teaching interests include studies in life stages, selfhood, and the Gothic novel.

Crawford spent five years as a missionary kid in Tanzania, East Africa and speaks fluent Swahili. She lives with her husband, George, in Marion, Alabama, and in her free time, she can be found reading mystery books, drinking black tea with milk and sugar, and rehabilitating the occasional songbird and squirrel.  

Degrees and Certifications

• PhD, English, University of Mississippi, 2015
• MA, English, Baylor University, 2008
• BA, English, University of Mobile, Summa Cum Laude, 2006

Honors and Awards

• The Mary Gibson Thompson Faculty Award, Judson College, 2020
• Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, Judson College, 2018
• Class Marshal, Graduate School, University of Mississippi, 2015
• Rota Fortunae Prize for Best Medieval Essay, Department of English, University of Mississippi, 2011

Fellowships

• Dissertation Fellowship Award, Graduate School, University of Mississippi, 2013
• Summer Research Assistantship Award, Department of English, University of Mississippi, 2013
• Graduate Student Honors Fellowship, Graduate School, University of Mississippi, 2009-2013
• Rota Fortunae Prize for Best Medieval Essay, Dept. of English, University of Mississippi, 2011

Publications

• “Dreaming of Manderley: Individualism, Aging, and the Novel.” Forthcoming in Studies in the Novel  56.3 (2024).
• "​Opaque Bodies and Perpetual Girlhood in Harriet Wilson's Our Nig." Saving the World: Girlhood and Evangelicalism in the Nineteenth-Century. Eds. Robin Cadwallader and Allison Giffen. New York: Routledge, 2018.
• "The Year in Conferences." Collaborative report on the January 2014 MLA Conference. ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 61.1 (2015): 114-211.
• "'Too Little to Count as Looking': Blackness and the Formation of the White Feminine in Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples." Mississippi Quarterly 66.1 (2013):  95-114.

Presentations

• “‘I Had No Thoughts But For the Teeth’: Obsessions and Compulsions in Poe’s Short Story ‘Berenice.’” Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature, Charleston, SC, 28 October 2023.
• “Idealize, Devalue, Discard: Narcissism and Emergent Consumer Culture in The Damnation of Theron Ware.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Virtual Conference, Nov. 12, 2022
• “The Abolition of Theron Ware: C.S. Lewis, Harold Frederic, and the Hidden Paradox of Existentialist Freedom.” Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature, Purcellville, VA, Jun. 11, 2022
• “‘I Thirsted for Knowledge of His Will’: The Epistemological Disaster of Charles Brocken Brown’s Wieland.” The Association for Core Texts and Courses, South Bend, IN, April 23, 2022
• “Becoming the Shared Body: Repurposing Poe’s Isolationist Gothic in Dan Simmons’ The Terror.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta, GA, Nov. 16, 2019, and Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature, Nov. 7, 2020
• “‘The Young Woman . . . Where Was She?’: The Uncanny Remembrance of the Body in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.” Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature, Cleveland, TN, 7 June 2019
• BridgeSTEM Program Keynote Speaker. University of Mississippi, July 28, 2015
• "Surviving Ph.D. Comprehensive Examinations." Graduate Women's Professional Development, University of Mississippi, October 2013
• "Conversion as Translation in Sylvester Judd's Margaret." Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, Oxford, MS, February 2014
• "'So Consummate, So Frightful a Depravity': Provisional Selfhood in Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland." Conference on Christianity and Literature, New Orleans, LA, February 2011
• "A Pearl in the Depths: Love and Knowledge in Eudora Welty's 'The Wide Net.'" South Central Modern Language Association Convention, Memphis TN, November 2007
• "Flannery O'Connor's 'The Artificial Nigger' and the Question of Redemption." Conference of Christianity and Literature, Dayton, OH, October 2004, and Sigma Tau Delta Convention, Kansas City, MO, March 2005