Hardwig received his B.A. from the University of Tennessee, with a major in English and a minor in Religious Studies. He holds an M.A. degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago (1995) and a PhD from the University of Florida (2000). Hardwig edited and composed the introduction for the most recent publication of Mary Noailles Murfree’s In the Tennessee Mountains (2008). His most recent project is entitled Mapping the Margins: Southern Regional Literature and National Imaginings. It is scheduled to be published later this year by the University of Virginia Press. At UT, Hardwig teaches classes on 19th and 20th century American Literature, Southern and Appalachian Literature and Culture, and regional literatures.