Biography: Katherine Burnett
Katherine Burnett Ph.D.
Katharine A. Burnett is an associate professor of English and the chair of the Arts and Languages department at Fisk University in Nashville, TN. She is also the coordinator of the English and Gender Studies programs.
Dr. Burnett's research focuses on 19th-century literature, literature of the U.S. South, and literary representations of enslavement. She is the author of Cavaliers and Economists: Global Capitalism and the Development of Southern Literature, 1820-1860 (LSU Press, 2019) and the co-editor of The Tacky South (LSU Press, 2022) and the Routledge Companion to Literature of the U.S. South (Routledge Press, 2023). Her work has appeared in the Cambridge History of the Literature of the U.S. South, the essay collection Southern Comforts, PMLA, College Literature, and the Southern Literary Journal (later south).
Education:
Ph.D. in English Literature, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
M.A. in English Literature, The University of Mississippi
B.A. in German, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
B.A. in English, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Contact information:
Office Location: Park Johnson Hall, room 216
Office Phone: 615-329-8695
Office Email: kburnett@fisk.edu
- Research & Publications
- Professional Services
- Conference Presentations, Supervision and Committees
- Courses
Katherine Burnett, Ph.D. Research & Publications
Books:
Co-editor with Monica Carol Miller. The Tacky South essay collection. (Louisiana State UP, 2022)
Co-editor with Todd Hagstette and Monica Carol Miller. The Routledge Companion to Literature of the U.S. South. (Routledge UP, 2022)
Cavaliers and Economists: Global Capitalism and the Development of Southern Literature, 1820-1860.
(Louisiana State UP, May 2019)
Book in progress:
Southern Speculations: The Early South’s Quest to Invent Itself
Articles and Essays:
(forthcoming) “The Global South: A Speculative Exercise.” In The New Nineteenth-Century Studies. Eds. Russ Castronovo and Robert Levine. Cambridge UP, 2024.
“The Confederacy and Other Southern Fictions.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Eds. Kathleen Diffley and Coleman Hutchison. Cambridge UP, 2022
“A Calculated Fiction: Antebellum Plantation Romances.” In A History of the Literature of the U.S. South. Ed. Harilaos Stecopoulos. Cambridge UP, 2021
“The Methodical Drinker: Alcohol, Economics, and Regional Identity in Early Virginian
Literature.” In Southern Comforts: Southern Writing on Drinking Culture. Eds. Conor Picken and Matthew Dischinger. Louisiana State UP, 2020.
“Mold on the Cornbread: The Spore Paradigm of Southern Studies.” In “The Changing Profession –
Adjust Your Maps: Manifestos from, for, and about United States Southern Studies.” PMLA. 131.1 (2016): 162-6.
“The Proslavery Social Problem Novel: Maria J. McIntosh’s Narrative of Reform in the Antebellum
South.” College Literature. 42.4 (2015): 619-647.
“Moving Toward a ‘No South’: George Washington Cable’s Global Vision in The Grandissimes.”
Southern Literary Journal. 45. 1 (2012): 21-38.
"Lafcadio Hearn's Traveling Regionalism." The Global South Journal. 3. 2 (2009): 64-82.
Grants:
Faculty representative (Fisk University), “The Legacies of American Slavery,” long-term research project through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Council of Independent Colleges, 2021-present.
Collaborated with Sewanee College on a community archiving initiative with North Nashville community groups, which culminated in a symposium held on Fisk’s campus, led by me and a fellow faculty member at Fisk.
As part of the collaboration, designed a community archiving course in which students worked with North Nashville community groups to preserve and digitize archives and oral histories.
Principal investigator, “Humanities Research for the Public Good,” $10,000 grant through the Council of
Independent Colleges, 2019-2020 academic year.
Coordinated a public archival exhibition titled, “Becoming North Nashville,” in conjunction with the Fisk University and Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet High School in Nashville, TN, February 2020.
Reviews:
“Review of Leaving the South: Border Crossing Narratives and the Remaking of Southern Identity.” American Literary History Online Review Series. 21 (2019).
“Review of Pirates and Devils: William Gilmore Simms’s Unfinished Postbellum Novels.” The William
Gilmore Simms Review. (Spring 2017).
Encyclopedia entries:
“Free Black Entrepreneurs.” The Encyclopedia of African American Business: Updated and Revised
Edition. 2nd Edition. Ed. Jessie Carney Smith. Greenwood P, 2017.
“Hip-hop Consumerism.” The Encyclopedia of African American Business: Updated and Revised Edition.
2nd Edition. Ed. Jessie Carney Smith. Greenwood P, 2017.
“Vince Cullers.” The Encyclopedia of African American Business: Updated and Revised Edition. 2nd
Edition. Ed. Jessie Carney Smith. Greenwood P, 2017.
Public writing:
(blog post) “Investigating North Nashville.” The Legacies of American Slavery, an Initiative of the Council of Independent Colleges. 24 May 2023. https://legaciesofslavery.net/2023/05/24/investigating-north-nashville/
(blog post with Monica Carol Miller) “Playlist for The Tacky South.” Large-Hearted Boy. 29 July 2022. https://largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2022/07/katharine_a_bur.html
Katherine Burnett, Ph.D. Professional Services
Associate Professor of English, Fisk University, Fall 2014 - present
At Fisk:
Chair, Arts & Languages Department, Fall 2022 - present
Coordinator, English Discipline, Fall 2020 - present
Coordinator, Women and Gender Studies Minor, Fall 2015 - present
Assistant Professor of English, Graceland University (Iowa), Fall 2013-Summer 2014
Katherine Burnett, Ph.D. Conference Presentations, Supervision and Committees
invited Talks/Keynotes:
Teach-In Facilitator, “Locating Slavery’s Legacies.” Atlanta History Center, April 2023.
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Invited speaker, “Sequencing Stories: Graphic Novels and Comic Narrative in Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner.” U of Wisconsin-Platteville, Humanities Festival, 30 October 2017.
Invited Panelist, “Futures in Southern Studies.” Modern Language Association, Austin, TX, January 2016.
Academic Presentations (selected):
Panel organizer and presenter, “The Tacky South.” The Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Atlanta, GA, June 2022.
Panel organizer and presenter, “Compiling the South.” The Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Atlanta, GA, June 2022.
“The Confederacy and Other Southern Fictions.” C19: Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Coral Gables, FL, March 2022.
“Out Loud: Engaging LGBTQ+ Student Populations.” SACSCOC Conference, virtual. December 2021.
"From Godey's to Liberia and Back: Sarah Josepha Hale and Proslavery Rhetoric." Modern Language Association, Chicago, January 2019.
Panel respondent, “The Tacky South.” American Studies Association, Atlanta, GA, November 2018.
"From Godey's to Liberia and Back: Sarah Josepha Hale and Proslavery Rhetoric." The Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Austin, TX, February 2018.
Panel chair and moderator, “Southern States of Insecurity: The South in Crises.” Modern Language Association, New York City, January 2018.
“From Godey’s to Liberia and Back: Sarah Josepha Hale and the Domestic Economy of Slavery.” American Studies Association, Denver, CO, November 2016.
Panel chair and presenter, “The Slaveholders of Liberty: Lucy Holcombe Pickens’s The Free Flag of Cuba and the Southern Imperial Dream.” C19: The Society of 19th-century Americanists, Penn State, State College, PA, March 2016.
“‘He’s Nothing But a Tacky’: Tackiness and Transgression in Nineteenth-Century Southwest Humor and Western Sketches.” Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Boston University, Boston, MA, March 2016.
Panelist, “Region and Its (Dis)Contents.” Modern Language Association, Vancouver, BC, January 2015.
“‘Has politics killed literature?’: Simms and the Literary Nationalism of Young America.” William Gilmore Simms Society, Columbia, SC, September 2014.
Invited panelist, “The State of Southern Literary Studies: Emerging Voices.” Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Arlington, VA, March 2014.
“The Gothic New South: George Washington Cable’s John March, Southerner and the Politics of Reconstruction.” Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Arlington, VA, March 2014.
“A Tale of the Alamo: Mapping the Nineteenth-Century Global Economy through Augusta Jane Evans’s Inez.” Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, Philadelphia, PA, July 2013.
“The Economics of Slave Labor in Martin Delany’s Blake.” American Studies Association, San Juan,
Puerto Rico, November 2012.
“The ‘Mischievous Interpolations’ of the Revolutionary War: Antebellum Romance and Re-Writing Southern History in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Capitalism.” Society for
the Study of Southern Literature, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, April 2012.
“Global Capitalism and Antebellum Social Reform: Maria McIntosh’s Critique of Slavery in The Lofty and the Lowly.” Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 2012.
Katherine Burnett, Ph.D. Courses
Composition I and II (CORE 150 and 160)
Survey of American Literature to 1865
Survey of American Literature after 1865
Introduction to Gender Studies (HSS 250)
British Literature II
Gender and Sexuality in Comics and Graphic Novels
Utopia/Dystopia: Gender and Fiction
Women and Protest
Gender and Sexuality in American Literature
Gender and Gothic Literature
English Senior Seminar