Spurgeon works in literatures of the American West and Southwest, as well as nature/environmental writing, gender studies, speculative fiction, and critical indigenous and decolonial theory. She is the author of Exploding the Western: Myths of Empire on the Postmodern Frontier, co-author of Writing the Southwest, editor of the critical anthology Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor of Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre and Hell-Bent for Leather:  Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western.  She has published essays on Ana Castillo, Cormac McCarthy, Stephen Graham Jones, the film Brokeback Mountain, the Marvel Comics superhero Echo, and the Aboriginal Australian television series, Cleverman. She founded and co-directs the Literature, Social Justice, and Environment Program (LSJE) in the Department of English, which includes a graduate concentration and undergraduate minor. In 2019/2020, Spurgeon was a Fulbright Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Bergen, Norway. 

Edited Collections

Hellbent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western.  Co-editors Michael Johnson, Kerry Fine, and Rebecca Lush.  University of Nebraska Press. 2025.

Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre.  Co-editors Michael Johnson, Kerry Fine, and Rebecca Lush.  University of Nebraska Press. 2020. 

Cormac McCarthy:  All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road.  Continuum Studies in Contemporary North American Fiction Series.  London: Continuum Publishing Group.  2011.  

Books

Exploding the Western:  Myths of Empire on the Postmodern Frontier.  College Station, TX:  Texas A&M University Press.  2005.   

Writing the Southwest, revised second edition.  With David K. Dunaway.  University of New Mexico Press.  2003.   

Writing the Southwest.  With David K. Dunaway.  New York: Plume/Penguin. 1995.   

Monographs

Ana Castillo:  Western Writers Series (No. 163).  Boise:  Boise State University Press. 2004. (Monograph booklet, 56 pages) 

Recent Articles and Chapters

“My father showed me an arrowhead.”  We Are Nature Defending Itself: An Anthology of Borderlands Women on Body & Place.  Editor, Cordelia Barrera. Texas A&M University Press.  Due 2025.

“’Do I bring my own leash or do I pick one up at the door?’:  Kink, Camp, and Queer Masculinity in CBS’s The Wild Wild West”.  Hell-Bent for Leather:  Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western.  Eds. Kerry Fine, Rebecca Lush, Michael Johnson, and Sara Spurgeon.  University of Nebraska Press.  2025. 

“Introduction,” Hell-Bent for Leather:  Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western.  Co-authors Rebecca Lush, and Michael Johnson.  Eds. Kerry Fine, Rebecca Lush, Michael Johnson, and Sara Spurgeon.  University of Nebraska Press.  2025. 

“‘Pink Eye Was All the Rage’:  Colonial Identity Sickness in Stephen Graham Jones’ The Bird is Gone:  A Monograph Manifesto.” Western American Literature.  58.4 (2024). 

“History and Other (colonial) Fantasies:  Indigenous Time Play in Cleverman.”  International Fantasy:  A Reader.  Eds.  Elana Gomel and Danielle Gurevitch.  Palgrave Macmillan.  2022.  

“Transnational American Studies, Ecocritical Narratives, and Global Indigeneity:  A Year of Teaching in Norway,” Journal of Transnational American Studies, 13.2 (2022). https://escholarship.org/uc/acgcc_jtas    

“Indians, Aliens, and Superheroes: Countering Silence and the Invisual in David Mack's Echo: Vision Quest.” Aesthetic Apprehensions: Silences and Absences in False Familiarities. Eds. Lene Johannessen and Jena Lee Habegger-Conti. Lanham, MD:  Lexington Books.  2020.  

“Introduction,” Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre. Co-authors Kerry Fine, Rebecca Lush, and Michael Johnson. Eds. Kerry Fine, Rebecca Lush, Michael Johnson, and Sara Spurgeon. University of Nebraska Press. 2020.   

“Indianizing the Western: Semiotic Tricksterism in William Sanders' Journey to Fusang.” Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre. Eds. Kerry Fine, Rebecca Lush, Michael Johnson, and Sara Spurgeon. University of Nebraska Press. 2020.  

"The Removes of Harriot Stuart:  Charlotte Lennox and the Birth of the Western."  Before the West was West:  Critical Essays on Pre-1800 Literature of the American Frontiers.  Eds. Amy Hamilton and Tom Hillard.  University of Nebraska Press, 2014.  

"'The bomb was like the Indians':  Trickster Mimetics and Native Nationalism in Martin Cruz Smith's The Indians Won," American Quarterly, 66.4 (2014): 999-1020.  
Interview with Larry McMurtry, Southwestern American Literature, 40.1 (Fall 2014):  47-79.  

"Miracles in the Desert:  Literature, Water, and Public Discourse in the American West," ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment). 16.3 (2009)  

Professor
American Literature/Literature, Social Justice, and Environment

Email: sara.spurgeon@ttu.edu
Office: HUMA 206