Michael Austin (born 1966) is an American academic, university administrator, author, and critic, specialising in the study of Mormon literature.

[2][3] Austin was the chair of the English and modern languages department at Shepherd University, and later became dean of graduate studies there.

Elizabeth Kraft observed that Austin's "critical alertness" resulted in "richly textured revisionary interpretations" of the works he analyzed.

[13] John Traver at Digital Defoe found New Testaments to be "a very valuable approach for looking at the eighteenth-century sequel" but with "some limitations in its capacity to treat many poems or non-fictional prose 'sequels'".

[14] In Kevin Seidel's review of the monograph, he acknowledges Austin's "good insights" but criticizes his conception of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments of the Bible to make comparisons to sequels in the 17th and 18th centuries.

He said that far-right politicians and conservative pundits have mischaracterized and mythologized the founding fathers as a hive mind, when they had views that contradicted each other and even themselves.

[16] Publishers Weekly found the book to be unbalanced, stating that Austin criticized right-wing entertainers and politicians but not left-wing ones, concluding that his "self-righteous disdain" would appeal to readers who had negative preconceptions about America's right wing.

[17] In a review for Free Inquiry, Rob Boston attributes Austin's focus on right-wing distortions to their commonly held belief that the original constitution is "a set-in-stone document".

[18] We must not be enemies: restoring America's civic tradition (2019) looks at the history of democracy from its origins in Greece as a method of befriending people different from us.

[19] At CHOICE, S. Mitropolitski recommended the book, describing it as combining ideas from cognitive psychology, theories of democracy, and history.

[10] Writing for the Journal of World Peace, Susan Cushman described it positively as "draw[ing] on examples from history to deliver a modern message".

It argues that the existence of a "Mormon literature" implies that the religious background of LDS Church members has created a greater cultural movement, at least in America.

[21]: 132, 134  He argued for an expansive definition of Mormon literature that would include journals and pamphlets and books written for non-Mormon audiences.

[21]: 144  Austin acknowledged the work as an "apprenticeship essay" concerned with the identity politics that were popular in the 1990s, but asserted in 2011 that he still believes in his core argument.

"[26][27] Austin co-edited Peculiar Portrayals: Mormons on the Page, Stage, and Screen (2010), which Eric Samuelsen hailed as "an outstanding group of papers".