Mark Allan Jackson is assistant professor of English and folklore at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. Over the years, his writing has been published in a variety of journals, such as American Music, Popular Music and Society, the Journal of American Folklore, and the Exquisite Corpse. Two collections of old-time labor music that he compiled and edited have been released as part of the West Virginia University Press Sound Archives, and he is currently working on a book about how the blues comments on the southern penal system.
