English

Katy Chiles

Katy Chiles

ADDRESS
210A McClung Tower
Curriculum Vitae

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Katy Chiles

Associate Professor of English

Critical Race Theory, African American, Early American, Native American

Katy Chiles teaches and writes about African American and Native American literature, early American literature and culture, critical race theory, and print cultures. With Professor Cassander Smith (University of Alabama), she serves as Co-Editor of Early American Literature.  Affiliated with the Africana Studies program, Professor Chiles teaches courses such as Major Black Writers, the Antebellum Black Atlantic, Black American Literature and Aesthetics, and Critical Race Theory. She has been awarded the University of Tennessee Research and Creative Achievement—Professional Promise Award from the UT Chancellor ’s Office; she has also received an Outstanding Teacher Award from the University of Tennessee Alumni Association. She has been awarded a University of Tennessee System President’s Award for Embracing Diversity.  Her work has appeared in journals such as PMLA, American Literature, and Early American Literature and has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the Newberry Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her book, Transformable Race:  Surprising Metamorphoses in the Literatures of Early America, was published by Oxford University Press. She is currently working on two book projects:  one that examines race, collaboration, and print history in early American literature, and another that puts in conversation Critical Race Theory and early American literature. Professor Chiles holds the Kenneth Curry Professorship of English.

Education

    • Ph.D.  Northwestern University

    • M.A.  Northwestern University

    • B.A.  University of Kentucky

Specialties

Critical Race Theory, African American, Early American, Native American

Honors

National

  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Faculty Fellowship. 2018-2019.
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend.  2016.
  • Newberry Library, Short Term Fellowship for Individual Research.  2014-15.
  • American Antiquarian Society, Stephen Botein Short-term Visiting Academic Research fellowship.  2014-15.
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend, “We the People” designation.  2010.
  • American Philosophical Society, Edward C. Carter Library Resident Research Fellowship. 2009-10.
  • Mellon Foundation Grant, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern University.  Fall 2007.

 

University

  • President’s Award, Embracing Diversity, University of Tennessee System President’s Office, 2024.
  • Faculty Academic Outreach Teaching Award, University of Tennessee College of Arts and Sciences. 2020.
  • Faculty Fellow, University of Tennessee Humanities Center. 2016-17.
  • University of Tennessee Research and Creative Achievement—Professional Promise Award,  UT Chancellor’s Office.  2014-15.
  • Outstanding Teacher Award, University of Tennessee Alumni Association.  2014-15.

Publications

Book

 

Articles and Book Chapters

  • With Henry Kirby. “Martin R. Delany.”  Oxford University Press Bibliographies in “African American Studies.”  Ed. Gene Andrew Jarrett.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.  https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780190280024/obo-9780190280024-0117.xml?rskey=IIuC0M&result=21
  • “Phillis Wheatley, Amanuensis” for Hidden Literacies, eds. Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss, Trinity College Digital Humanities Project (hiddenliteracies.org)
  • “The Competing Demands of Early African American Literature” in African American Literature in Transition, Volume 1, 1750-1800, ed. Rhondda Robinson Thomas. Cambridge University Press, 2022. 281-305.
  • “Synchronic and Diachronic: Race in Early American Literature” in Race in American Literature and Culture, ed. John Ernest. Cambridge University Press, 2022. 26-40.
  • “Tribal Sovereignty, Native American Literature, and the Complex Legacy of Hendrick Aupaumut.” In Stories of Nation: Fiction, Politics, and the American Experience, eds. Martin Griffin and Christopher Hebert. University of Tennessee Press, 2017. 199-223.
  • “From Writing the Slave Self to Querying the Human: The First 25 Years of The Signifying Monkey,” solicited for symposium on Henry L. Gates’s The Signifying Monkey for Early American Literature. 50.3 (2015): 873-890. 
  • “Becoming Colored in Occom and Wheatley’s Early America.”  PMLA 123.5 (2008): 1398-1417.
  • “Within and without Raced Nations:  Intratextuality, Martin Delany, and Blake; or the Huts of America.”  American Literature 80.2 (2008):  323-52.