Keith Mitchell

Expertise

African American and African Diasporic Literatures, American Literature, Ethnic American Literature, and Modern and Contemporary American Drama

Research Interests

African American and African Diasporic Literatures, American Literature, Ethnic American Literature, and Modern and Contemporary American Drama

I am a scholar of Contemporary African American and American Literature. My research has focused on Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Gayl Jones, and Percival Everett.

I also have a keen interest in 20th and 21st century African American Drama.

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: Comparative Literature with a Specialty in African American and African Diasporic Cultures (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 and English Literature, (1985), Emory University - Atlanta, Georgia

Biosketch

Keith Mitchell, Ph.D., is an associate professor of English at UMass Lowell. He teaches survey courses in American and African American literature and upper-level special topics courses on nineteenth-century American literature and the Harlem Renaissance. He is currently working on two projects: an edited collection of essays on Percival Everett and a monograph on African American literature and the Vietnam War.

Selected Awards and Honors

• Haskell Memorial Award for Distinguished Teaching. Awarded. March 30, 2024. UMass Lowell.
• Toni Morrison Society Book Award Selection Committee, Fall 2023. Judge.
• SGA Excellence in Teaching Award, Spring 2023.
• Riverhawks Scholars Hidden Curriculum Panel, Summer 2023. Panel Presenter.
• OERscar Distinguished Award, Student Government and MASSPRIG, Spring 2022.
• Jacqueline F. Moloney College Founders Award Recipient, Honors College, Fall 2021.
• Keynote Speaker at the UML Faculty Research Symposium, December 2, 2020.
• The Manning Teaching Prize Recipient. Awarded June 24, 2020. UMass Lowell.
• 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

Books

• Mitchell, Keith Bernard and Robin Vander, Eds. Percival Everett: Writing Other/Wise. Xavier UP, Fall 2014.
• Mitchell, Keith Bernard, and Robin Vander, Eds. Perspectives on Percival Everett. UP Mississippi, Spring 2013.
• Mitchell, Keith Bernard and Fiona Mills, Eds. After the Pain: Critical Essays on Gayl Jones. Peter Lang Publishing, 2006.
• Mitchell, Keith. “The Future Is Now: Keith S. Wilson’s Affrilachian-Afrofuturist Politico Aesthetics.” Callaloo, A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters. Spring 2024, Edited by Crystal Wilkerson.
• Mitchell, Keith. “I Heard You Went to Nam”: Frontier Mythology, Violence, and the Afterlife of the Vietnam War in Percival Everett’s Walk Me to the Distance. Orbit: A Journal of American Literature. Fall 2023, Edited by Sascha Pöhlmann (December 2023).
• Mitchell, Keith. “Segregation and the South.” James Baldwin in Context, edited by D. Quentin Miller, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 147-156.

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

• “Troubling Du Bosian Double Consciousness: Psychic Suicide in Erasure.” Percival: an International Conference on the Literature and Art of Percival Everett. King's College London, December 6-7, 2024. Presenter and Moderator.
• “Considering James.” Percival: an International Conference on the Literature and Art of Percival Everett. Kings College London, December 6-7, 2024. Panel Moderator.
• “Telling Our Stories: In Pursuit of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Northeast American Studies Association, at Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts) November 12, 2022. Moderator and Presenter.
• “Poetics of Wonder: Keith S. Wilson’s Affrilachian/Afrofuturist Vision” at the College Languages Association Conference, (Virtual) Nashville, April 8-10, 2021. Presenter.
• “Bodies Tell Stories: Between the Human and the Animal in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones” at the College Language Association Conference, Memphis, April 9-14, 2019. Presenter.
• 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

Research Currently in Progress

I have contributed an essay to a collection on Suicide and Suicidality in Contemporary American Literature. Lee Okan, an assistant professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College, is editing the collection. The essay’s title is “Troubling Black Blackface Minstrelsy and Du Boisian Double-Consciousness: Psychic Suicide in Percival Everett’s Erasure.”

I am co-editing an essay on Percival Everett's work with Professor George Kowalik of King's College, London. The publisher is Manchester University Press. I will be contributing an essay for the collection tentatively titled “Reanimated Absurdity: Camusian Philosophy and Institutional Collapse in Percival Everett’s American Desert.”

I am also working on a scholarly monograph on Black Literature and the Vietnam War, which Vanderbilt University Press will publish.