Lauren Rule Maxwell specializes in contemporary literature from the Americas. A native of Richmond, Virginia, she graduated summa cum laude from Wake Forest University with a B.A. in English and a minor in Biology. After writing professionally for healthcare organizations in Washington, D.C., she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory University.
Dr. Maxwell joined The Citadel faculty in 2008. She teaches classes in American and contemporary literature as well as writing courses such as Advanced Composition, Honors Advanced Writing, and Professional Communications. Because of her commitment to writing, she is involved with the Lowcountry Writing Project, which she directed between Fall 2017 and Spring 2022.
In 2013, Dr. Maxwell received The Citadel Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Teaching, and Service. She served as the Director of the Master of Arts in Teaching English Program from 2012 to 2014, creating assessments to re-secure accreditation for the program, and in 2017 designed the Professional Communications curriculum that most students now take under The Citadel’s new General Education Program. She currently is Director of Business Communications and Associate Director of the Distinguished Scholars Program at The Citadel.
Dr. Maxwell’s monograph Romantic Revisions in Novels from the Americas was published in the Purdue University Press Comparative Cultural Studies series. She has authored articles in Modern Fiction Studies, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, Margaret Atwood Studies, and the European Journal of American Studies. She has chapters in Cambridge University Press’s F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context and A History of Virginia Literature as well as in Teaching Hemingway and Modernism, Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy, and The Romance of Regionalism in the Work of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: The South Side of Paradise.
Since 2021, Dr. Maxwell has served as the President of the Margaret Atwood Society, an international organization of scholars, teachers, and students that promotes scholarly exchange about Atwood’s works. She is editing Approaches to Teaching the Works of Margaret Atwood for the MLA Press and writing a book on poetry about Civil War monuments.