Mark F. Fernandez

Mark F. Fernandez is the Patricia Carlin O'Keefe Distinguished Professor of History at Loyola. A native New Orleanian, he received his B.A. and M.A. Degrees from the University of New Orleans and his Ph.D. from The College of William and Mary in Virginia. He came to Loyola in 1992 after teaching at what is now Texas State University from 1990-1992. Fernandez was promoted to associate professor in 1997 and Professor in 2007. Fernandez teaches courses on early America, the South, the West, the American hero, and American folk culture. The Loyola Student Alumni Association has twice recognized Dr. Fernandez for meritorious teaching. He has published on topics ranging from the seventeenth-century Chesapeake to the history of law in antebellum South. His notable scholarly activities include A Law Unto Itself? Essays in the New Louisiana Legal History, (Louisiana State University Press, 2001) and From Chaos to Continuity: Evolution of Louisiana's Judicial System, 1712-1862, (Louisiana University Press, 2001, 2014) which won the Louisiana Literary Award from the Louisiana Library Association. He also served as Guest Editor with Jon Kukla for the Journal of the West's special Louisiana Purchase edition which appeared in 2004. He received a Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History for his 1997 Summer Institute, "New Orleans through Its Sources." In 1999, Dr. Fernandez received the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Special Humanities Awards for his work with their summer institutes. He is past president and Fellow of the Louisiana Historical Association and in 2023 he received that organization’s Garnie W. McGinty Lifetime Meritorious Service Award. He has served on the Board and the executive committee of the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival. In recent years his research interests have turned to exploring the life of American folk icon, Woody Guthrie. In 2012, he was named the Seventh Annual Woody Guthrie Fellow by the Woody Guthrie Foundation and BMI Music Publishers. He is a founding member of the Teaching Woody Guthrie Collective.