Rev. George Piggford, C.S.C.
Professor of English
Biography
George Piggford spent the first 25 years of his life in western Pennsylvania before moving to Montreal to pursue his doctorate in English literature and French theory at the University of Montreal. He spent 2 years teaching at Tufts University before entering formation for the Congregation of Holy Cross, which included theological study at the University of Notre Dame and led to his priestly ordination in 2005. He joined Stonehill’s English faculty in 2004.
George Piggford's research and teaching interests include modernism and postmodernism, gender, and questions of transcendence in literature.
Professor Piggford's current work focuses on Forster’s spirituality and his connection to the Hogarth Press, the aesthetics of Evelyn Waugh, and mysticism in Flannery O'Connor. Professor Piggford has participated in the SURE program twice, working with student research assistants on O’Connor’s fiction and the poetry of Walt Whitman and Sherman Alexie.
Education
- B.A., M.A., Duquesne University
- M.Div., University of Notre Dame
- Ph.D., University of Montreal
Courses Taught
- Critical Theory
Selected Publications and Articles
Prof. Piggford's scholarship on the Bloomsbury Group has appeared in Mosaic, The Charleston Magazine, and in Queer Forster, which he co-edited with Robert K. Martin ( Chicago, 1997). He edited Forster's "The Feminine Note in Literature" for the Bloomsbury Heritage series (Cecil Woolf, 2001). Essays on contemporary literature can be found in Modern Drama, English Studies in Canada, and Cultural Critique.
- "Grace and Extravagance in Mark Doty's Elegies," in The Strategic Smorgasbord of Postmodernity (Cambridge Scholars, 2007).
- "The Via Negativa in Forster's A Passage to India" in Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory (Wilfred Laurier, 2011)
- "'Contentment in Dimness': Flannery O'Connor and Friedrich von Hugel" in Ragione, Fiction, e Fede (Prezzo di copertina, 2011)