Philip Nel
University Distinguished Professor / Graduate Faculty
Ph.D. 1997, Vanderbilt University
Website: https://philnel.com/
Email: philnel@ksu.edu
Office: English/Counseling Services Bldg. 103
Fields of interest:
Children's Literature; American Studies; Comics; Cultural Studies; Biography; Gender and Women's Studies.
Philip Nel's books include:
- How to Draw the World: Harold and the Purple Crayon and the Making of a Children's Classic (Oxford UP, 2024)
- Keywords for Children's Literature, Second Edition (co-edited with Lissa Paul and Nina Christensen, NYU Press, 2021)
- Crockett Johnson's Barnaby Volume Four: 1948-1949 (co-edited with Eric Reynolds, Fantagraphics, 2020)
- Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books (Oxford UP, 2017)
- Crockett Johnson's Barnaby Volume Three: 1946-1947 (co-edited with Eric Reynolds, Fantagraphics, 2016)
- Crockett Johnson's Barnaby Volume Two: 1944-1945 (co-edited with Reynolds, Fantagraphics, 2014)
- Crockett Johnson's Barnaby Volume One: 1942-1943 (co-edited with Reynolds, Fantagraphics, 2013)
- Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature (University Press of Mississippi, 2012)
- Keywords for Children's Literature (co-edited with Lissa Paul, NYU Press, 2011)
- Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature (co-edited with Julia Mickenberg, NYU Press, 2008)
- The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (Random House, 2007)
- Dr. Seuss: American Icon (Continuum, 2004)
- The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks (University Press of Mississippi, 2002)
- J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter Novels: A Reader's Guide (Continuum, 2001).
Forthcoming: the final volume of Crockett Johnson's Barnaby (co-edited with Eric Reynolds, Fantagraphics, Feb. 2025). Nel also wrote the Afterwords to Crockett Johnson's Magic Beach (Front Street, 2005) and Johnson's Harold's Imagination: 3 Adventures with the Purple Crayon, (HarperColllins, 2018), as well as the Introductions to The Cat in the Hat: 60th Anniversary Edition (HarperCollins UK, 2017) and The Ruling Clawss: The Socialist Cartoons of Syd Hoff (New York Review Books, 2023). Nel is the author of over fifty essays, which can be found in a range of venues. See his CV for details.
Nel is Director of the English Department's Program in Children's Literature. He is the recipient of the Balfour Jeffrey Award in Humanities and Social Sciences, a Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Achievement Award. He has won KSU's Distinguished Graduate Faculty Award, and Stamey Award (for excellence in teaching). His Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (2012) won the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association's Rollins Book Award, and was named a Children's Literature Association Honor Book. You can learn more about his Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books (2017) via his Talk @ Google. Along with Naomi Wood & others, he is webmaster of the English Dept. website.