Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington
Professor Justus, whose field of expertise encompasses 19th- and 20th-century United States literature as well as the regional literature of the Southern states, has been deemed one of our most successful and admired teachers, a writer of lucid, graceful prose and author of a prize-winning study of one of America's most significant mid-century writers.
Justus is a past president of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature and past chair of the Contemporary American Literature group of the Modern Language Association and of the American Literature Sectionof the MLA.
Professor Justus is appreciated equally for his contributions
to the lives of his students of American literature. Among his
admirers are 20 former graduate students, whose dissertations
he has directed. Today some of them can be found teaching and
spreading their mentor's scholarly reputation in such schools
as his alma mater, Tennessee: the universities of Notre Dame,
Idaho, Arkansas, and Iowa State; Kenyon and Wesleyan colleges.