Dr. Procope Bell’s research areas are mid-to-late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century African American literature and contemporary Black feminist criticism.

Her book project, tentatively titled Respectable Radicalism: The Rhetoric of Black Women’s Intellectualism, examines how so-called “respectable” rhetoric coheres with radical thought in Black women’s writing in the nineteenth century. Respectable Radicalism focuses on Black women’s strategies to be heard, traces Black women’s intellectual thought, and considers the multivalent ways that Black women make plain their inherent humanity through a strategic use of respectable rhetoric. At the core, her work examines strategies of Black resistance and the makings of Black subjectivity in a world bent on refusing citizenship, and even personhood, to Black people.

At the University of Tennessee, Dr. Procope Bell teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on African American literature and Black feminist theory, with a focus on literary criticism and effective writing.