Ralph Wood, a native of East Texas, received his B.A. in English from Texas A&M University at Commerce in 1963, an M.A. in English from Texas A&M University at Commerce in 1965, an M.A. in English from the University of Chicago in 1968, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago in 1975. He has taught at Wake Forest University, Samford University, and Baylor University, where he has been University Professor of Theology and Literature since 1998.

Professor Wood is certainly one of the most distinguished scholars of the theological interpretation of literature working in the United States today, and his eminence in this field makes him a perfect choice for the Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellowship. He is the author of several books, including Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Eerdmans, 2004); The Gospel According to Tolkien (Westminster John Knox Press, 2003); and The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, John Updike, and Peter De Vries) (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).

Among the scores of articles Professor Wood has written are “How the Church Became Invisible: A Christian Reading of American Literary Tradition,” (with Stanley Hauerwas), published in the journal Religion and Literature in 2006; “Following the Many Roads of Recent Tolkien Scholarship” [a review essay on six related books], published in the journal Christianity and Literature in 2005; and “Conflict and Convergence on Fundamental Matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien,” published in the journal Renascence in 2003.

Among the many distinguished lectures Professor Wood has delivered are, most recently, the Quentin MacLaurin Lectures at the University of Minnesota in November 2006, and The Inaugural J.J. Quinn, S.J. Memorial Lecture in Catholic Intellectual Tradition at Scranton University in April of 2005. 

During his fellowship year Professor Wood aims to work on the first scholarly book devoted entirely to the aesthetics of G.K. Chesterton, and specifically Chesterton’s understanding of the imagination in its moral and theological implications. His research will boil down to the central question: How did Chesterton’s Christian convictions inform both his literary theory and his literary work?