Keith Mitchell is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at UMass Lowell.

Keith B. Mitchell, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

College
College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Department
English
Phone
978-934-4734
Office
O'Leary Library - 4th Floor
Links

Expertise

African American, Caribbean and Nineteenth & Twentieth century American literature

Research Interests

19th, 20th, and 21st century African American literature and culture; 20th and 21st century Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature; 19th, 20th, and 21st century American literature; Postcolonial literature and World Literature.

African American and American postmodern literature; 19th century realism and naturalism; The Harlem Renaissance; American literary modernism; Percival Everett; 19th, 20th and 21st century African American and American poetry; Cormac McCarthy; James Baldwin. Toni Morrison; Gayl Jones; Theodore Dreiser.

Education

  • Ph D: Anglophone and Francophone Postcolonial Literatures, (2003), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Chapel Hill, NC
    Supporting Area: African American Literature and American Literature
    Dissertation/Thesis Title: "In the Wake of the World: African and Jewish Diasporic Connections in the Contemporary West Indian Novel"
  • MA, (1994), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    Dissertation/Thesis Title: Rewriting the African diaspora : Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the widow and Maryse Condé's Hérémakhonon
  • Other: Post-B.A. Courses in American Literature, (1991), Georgia State University - Atlanta, Georgia
  • BA: American English Literature, (1985), Emory University - Atlanta, Georgia

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Minority Presence Fellowship, Teaching - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Student Government Outstanding Teaching Award (University of Massachusetts Lowell) (2010), Teaching - University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Resident Fellowship: Directed by Professor Hilary Holladay (2010) - University of Virginia, Charlottesville
  • Student Government Outstanding Teaching Award (2010) - University of Massachusetts at Lowell
  • English Department Outstanding Teaching Award (2009) - University of Massachusetts at Lowell
  • Associate Editor of Caribbean Vistas (2009) - Caribbean Vistas
  • National Humanities Center Fellowship: Herman Melville Summer Institute (2006), Service, Community - Herman Melville Summer Institute
  • National Humanities Center Fellowship: Herman Melville Summer Institute (2006) - National Humanities Center
  • Penn State University Travel Grant (2005), Teaching - Penn State University
  • Penn State University Research and Development Grant (2005), Scholarship/Research - Penn State University
  • Penn State University Research and Development Grant (2004) - Penn State
  • Penn State University Travel Grant (2004), Teaching - Penn State University
  • Penn State University Research and Development Grant (2004), Scholarship/Research - Penn State University
  • Minority Presence Fellowship (1995) - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Foreign Language Area Fellowship: Center for European Studies (1995) - Center for European Studies, Sorbonne, Paris
  • Carolina Publishing Institute Certificate of Completion in Editing (1993) - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Selected Publications

  • Mitchell, K.B. (2013). All This Difficult Darkness: Lynching and the Exorcism of the Black Other in Theodore Dreiser’s ’Nigger Jeff’ (pp. 201-216). Ashgate
  • Mitchell, K.B., Vander, R.G. (2013). Perspectives on Percival Everett. Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, c2013
  • Mitchell, K.B. (2013). Writing (Fat) Bodies: Grotesque Realism and the Carnivalesque in Percival Everett’s Zulus. Canadian Review of American Studies, 43(2) 269-285.
  • Mitchell, K.B. (2011). James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile. Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature, 9(1) 1.
  • Mitchell, K.B. (2008). A Still Burning Fire: Afua Cooper’s Triptych of Resistance (pp. 37-56). Africa World
  • Mitchell, K.B. (2008). Locating the South and Jim Crow Violence in James Baldwin's "Another Country" and William Gardner Smith's "The Last of the Conquerors.". Obsidian, 9(2) 26-42.
  • Mills, F., Mitchell, K.B. (2006). After the pain : critical essays on Gayl Jones / Fiona Mills, editor, and Keith B. Mitchell, assistant editor. New York : Peter Lang, 2006
  • Mills, F., Mitchell, K.B. (2006). After the Pain: An Introduction. After the Pain: Critical Essays on Gayl Jones, 1.
  • Mitchell, K.B. (2006). CHAPTER SEVEN: "Trouble in Mind": (Re)visioning Myth, Sexuality, and Race in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora (pp. 155).
  • Mitchell, K.B. (2002). Naming That Which Dare Not Speak: Homosexual Desire in Joseph Zobel’s Black Shack Alley (pp. 115-130). UP of the South

Selected Presentations

  • Encountering the Face of the Other: Levinasian Ethics in Percival Everett's 'God's Country' - International Conference on Percival Everett, March 2013 - Rouen, France
  • Holocausts and Cross-Cultural Imaginations: Memory and Cultural Violence in Wilson Harris's 'Jonestown' - Caribbean Unbound Conference, April 2011 - Lugano, Switzerland
  • A Southerner in Strange Lands: How My Obsession with Books Made Me a Global Thinker - Sigma Tau Delta Speakers Series, April 2010
  • Camusian Philosophy and the Absurd in Percival Everett's 'American Desert' - The Conference on the Contemporary African American Novel, October 2009 - Penn State
  • Grotesque Realism and the Carnivalesque in Percival Everett's 'Zulus' - ALA, March 2009 - Boston, MA
  • Witnessing the Only Way I Can: Policing the Black Body in James Baldwin's 'Another Country' and William Gardner Smith's 'The Last of the Conquerors' - James Baldwin in his Time/in Our Time Conference, March 2009 - Suffolk University
  • Grotesque Realism and the Carnivalesque in Percival Everett's 'Zulus' - The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900, February 2009
  • African-American Literary Studies and the Feminist Critique after The Color Purple - 'Callaloo' Literary Journal's Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration, October 2007 - Baltimore, Maryland
  • Knowing the Things behind Things: Egyptian Mythology as a Site of Memory in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' - Tony Morrison Society's Sites of Memory Conference, July 2005 - Cleveland, Ohio
  • Sexuality and Africanist Spirituality: Oppositional Discourse to Western (Neo)Puritanism in Maryse Cond_ês 'I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem' - The Gathering: A Conference on African American Literature, June 2005 - Chapell Hill, North Carolina
  • Femininity, Abjection, and (Black) Masculinity in James Baldwin's 'Giovanni's Room' and Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' - Pennsylvania State's Conference on the African American Novel, April 2005 - Penn State
  • A Change is Gonna Come: Civil and Spiritual Movement in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" and Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge", October 2004 - Alcala, Spain
  • Racing Through History: Harriett Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1927 silent film version - Dialogues on Race and Identity: "A 'Tomming and Passing Symposium'", April 2002 - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • All Our Yesterdays: Utopianism, Holocausts, and History in Wilson Harris's 'Jamestown' - Fourth International Conference on Caribbean Literature, November 2001 - Fort de France, Martinique
  • "Trouble in Mind": (Re)visioning Myth, Race, and Sexuality in Gayl Jones's 'Corregidora' - Literature and the Diaspora (College Languages Association), April 2001 - Tulane University, New Orleans
  • Look Homeward Anglo: Questioning Roots in Caryl Phillips's 'A State of Independence' - Literature and the Diaspora (College Languages Association), April 2001 - Tulane University, New Orleans
  • Under a Tropic Sun: 'Batallien' Philosophy in Ren_ Depestre's 'Le mŠt de cocaigne' - Carolina Conference on Romance Languages, March 2001 - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Colonizing the Body in Herv_ Guibertês 'Le Paradis' - The Rhetoric of the Other, May 2000 - Montreal, Quebec
  • Queering a Space in Caribbean Literature: Joseph Zobelês 'La rue cases-n�gres' - The Rhetoric of the Other, May 1999 - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill