Born in Atlanta and raised in Marietta, Georgia, Allen Mendenhall resists categories and groupings and doesn’t like being pigeonholed as a writer-attorney-Southerner-poet-literary critic-Bunburyer-Calvinist-libertarian-porcher-educator-essayist-misanthrope-humanist-Japanophile-eccentric-conformist-traveler-aesthete-pessimist-legal polycentrist-custodian-collector-seeker-conservative-classical liberal-thinker-bibliophile-blogger because such a label is far too limiting.  He would call himself a pragmatist, but doing so would prove him wrong.  He holds a B.A. in English from Furman University, M.A. in English from West Virginia University, J.D. from West Virginia University College of Law, and LL.M. in transnational law from Temple University Beasley School of Law.  He is a Ph.D. student at Auburn University, where he received a Graduate Dean Fellowship.  He is the managing editor of the Southern Literary Review and has been an adjunct legal associate at the Cato Institute as well as a Humane Studies Fellow with the Institute for Humane Studies in Arlington, Virginia.   His research and writing interests include Law-and-Literature, Literary Theory and Criticism, Legal and Literary Hermeneutics, Jurisprudence, Transnational Law, and American Studies. He has studied at the University of London (Birkbeck College), the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham, Centro Universitario Vila Velha, Fundacao Getulio Vargas (Direito Rio), and the Tokyo campus of Temple University. He has several publications to his credit, including essays, articles, reviews, encyclopedia entries, and poems, and he has written on a wide variety of topics such as William Butler Yeats, Shakespeare, Harper Lee, legal research and writing, the American prison system, the Dred Scott decision, Japanese culture and politics, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and more. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in both popular and scholarly periodicals, including The Journal Jurisprudence, Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence, The Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives, PEER English, The Michigan State Journal of International Law, Libertarian Papers, The University Bookman, Modernist Cultures, Antiwar.com, The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Counterpunch, LewRockwell.com, The Legendary, The Front Porch Republic, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, The Student Lawyer, West Virginia History, The Southern Literary Review, Taki’s Magazine, The Sigma Tau Delta Review, Chronicles, Splizz, The Aroostook Review, The West Virginia Lawyer, The Oregon Commentator, 49th Parallel, Mises Daily, The West Virginia Record, Brazzil Magazine, Liberty, Tributaries, The Dominion Post, The Christian Lawyer, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Journal of Liberty and Society, and The Independent Review.  He lives in Atlanta with his wife, Giuliana, and blogs at The Literary Table, Austrian Economics and Literature, and TheMendenhall.com.  Visit his website at AllenMendenhall.com.