William Matthew McCarter

William Matthew McCarter (born 1970 in St. Louis, MO) is a Pushcart nominated American author and scholar who has written extensively about "white trash" culture in fiction and nonfiction. His prolific fiction is influenced by suc writers as Dorothy Allison and William Faulkner. McCarter is one of the few scholars who has used a cultural studies approach to understand white trash culture. His novel argument is that poor rural American whites can be considered an ethnic group facing similar prejudices as other minorities. He also explores in his fiction and nonfiction the ways class constructs social identity. Since publishing his first academic works on the subject of white trash culture, the issues of whiteness have become highly debated within sociology, literature, and other humanities in the American academy.

McCarter grew up in the small rural community of Arcadia Valley in Southeast Missouri. He returned to live in the community with his wife Melissa Miles McCarter years later. McCarter has extensively addressed in his writing the experience of growing up in Southeast Missouri while poor, rural, and white. Class and race figures prominently in his fiction.

McCarter received his PhD in English with a focus on American Literature from the University of Texas at Arlington. McCarter has produced extensive scholarship in literature from the American South, economic class, and race.

Homo Redneckus: On Being Not Qwhite in America explores class and race in American rural culture from a historical and literary perspective. He uses his own experiences growing up "white trash" as a foundation for understanding the ways in which poor rural whites are discriminated against and "othered." His work uses the frameworks of cultural studies, literature, and critical theory to explore the intersection of race and class in American culture. The scholarly work was nominated for the 2012 Missouri Humanities Council Award.

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