Jay Watson received his B.A. degree from the University of Georgia and his M.A. and PhD from Harvard University. He has taught at the University of Mississippi since 1989. In 2002 and 2003, he was Visiting Fulbright Professor of American Studies at two universities in Finland, the University of Turku, and Abo Akademi University. His books include Forensic Fictions: The Lawyer Figure in Faulkner (1993), Reading for the Body: The Recalcitrant Materiality
of Southern Fiction, 1893-1985 (2012), William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity (2019), and ten edited or co-edited volumes. He was president of the William Faulkner Society from 2009 to 2012.