Michael Stanford

Principal Lecturer, Barrett Honors College, Arizona State University

Class Year

1978

Professional Background

PhD, UVA; JD, Arizona State; current college teacher, former criminal defense attorney

How has being an English graduate from Duke University helped shape your professional success?

I remember a number of my mentors fondly, but my true mentors were the writers, James Applewhite and the late Reynolds Price. They were enormously encouraging about my own writing and my editorship of the Archive. They helped fuel a literary and academic obsession which led to a PhD in English from UVA and many years of teaching in different settings. I also eventually became a lawyer, but Jim and Reynolds aren't to blame for that. I've put my legal and literary fixations together by becoming a scholar of law and literature. I currently teach both humanities and law related courses in the undergraduate honors program of a giant state university. Jim and Reynolds will always be models to me as brilliant writer/scholars who treated their undergraduate students with enormous respect for their capacity and potential.

Michael Stanford