James B. Meriwether is a native of Columbia, South Carolina. He received his B.A. degree at the University of South Carolina and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Princeton University. He served as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas, and Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Meriwether was a Fulbright professor at the University of Paris, France, from 1970 to 1971 and at the University of Bonn, Germany, in 1980. Meriwether was an American Council of Learned Societies fellow from 1960 to 1961 and a Guggenheim fellow from 1963 to 1964. He authored The Literary Career of William Faulkner, 1961 and edited Essay, Speeches and Public Letters of William Faulkner, 1966. He has authored other works and is a contributor to professional journals. James B. Meriwether was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Board of Foreign Scholarships (now the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board) in 1983. He served as Chairman of the Board from 1984 to 1988.