Leigh H. Edwards

Leigh H. Edwards is an American professor of English at Florida State University. She is the author of three books, Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (2009), The Triumph of Reality TV: The Revolution in American Television (2013), and Dolly Parton, Gender, and Country Music (2018).

Leigh H. Edwards earned Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. from Duke University.

Leigh H. Edwards specializes in 20th— and 21st-century U.S. literature and popular culture, with particular emphasis on contemporary popular music and television as well as film and new media.

Edwards also studies recent innovations in multi-platform storytelling (coordinated narratives told across multiple media platforms, such as via television, popular music, film, and new media).

Her work on the links between literature and popular music includes a book on Dolly Parton is the winner of the Foreword Book of the Year Award 2017. This book analyzes the development of singer-songwriter Parton’s oeuvre across her career and the evolution of her complex media image and stage persona.

Photo credit: Florida State University