Lauren Rule Maxwell is an Associate Professor of English at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, and author of Romantic Revisions in Novels from the Americas, published in the Purdue University Press Comparative Cultural Studies Series. Dr. Maxwell teaches American and contemporary literature as well as advanced composition, professional writing, and business communications. She also serves as director of the Lowcountry Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project that fosters writing among teachers in the Charleston area and helps them use writing more effectively in their classrooms. A native of Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Maxwell is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Emory University.

“Facing the Civil War: Contemporary Poems about Civil War Monuments” is Dr. Maxwell’s current project that examines poems by modern and contemporary poets to better understand how and why Civil War monuments continue to inspire spirited debate about the legacy of the Civil War and to more clearly identify the effects of this legacy on present-day American society.