About

Adam Jernigan teaches English at a high school in New York City. He has over twenty years of teaching experience at various high schools in New York, Illinois, and California. He also spent several years teaching college-level English courses at the University of Chicago.

Adam earned a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University as well as an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago. Trained as a specialist in American literature, he has published essays on fiction and poetry in a range of scholarly and popular journals.

To support English teachers, Adam founded a curriculum design company called Rigorous Resources. His goal was to create top-quality lesson plans on literary texts by diverse authors. 

The teaching resources made by Rigorous Resources are now being utilized in thousands of English classrooms around the world. They are also used by hundreds of homeschooling parents to cultivate a life-long love of literature in their teenage children. You can browse such resources either at my online shop or else at my TPT store.

In his spare time, Adam enjoys playing outdoors with his two kids. He hopes they'll grow up to share his passion for reading as well as for outdoor activities like hiking, biking, and camping.

 

Selected Publications

“Paraliterary Labors in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar: Typists, Teachers, and the Pink-Collar Subtext.” Modern Fiction Studies 60:1 (Spring 2014): 1-27.

“James Baldwin’s Post-Sentimental Fiction: From ‘Previous Condition’ to Another Country.” Arizona Quarterly 70:1 (Spring 2014): 173-201.

“Feeling Out Loud: The Affective Publics Reading Group Remembers Lauren Berlant.” Critical Inquiry: In the Moment. (July 2021).

“Affective Realism: Economies of Feeling in Postwar American Fiction.” Dissertation written for the English Department at the University of Chicago. 2012.

 

Awards

The first publication listed above was awarded the Margaret Church Prize for the best essay published in Modern Fiction Studies in 2014.