Keith Mitchell

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

Keith B. Mitchell, Ph.D.

Associate Professor