Britt M. Rusert
Box 90017
Department of English
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
bmr6@duke.edu
EDUCATION
Duke University, Department of English, Ph.D. Candidate, Fall 2003-Present
Duke University, Women’s Studies, Graduate Certificate Program, Fall 2003-Present
B.A., Allegheny College, summa cum laude, Valedictorian, English, 1999-2003
Dissertation: “Shackled in the Garden: Ecologies of Race in American Plantation Cultures”
RESEARCH and TEACHING FIELDS
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literatures, African American Literature and Visual Culture, Science and Technology Studies; Feminist Theory; New Media; Theories of Ecology; History of Medicine
PUBLICATIONS
Review of Haunted Life: Visual Culture and Black Modernity, by David Marriott, and Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance, by Cherene Sharrard- Johnson. American Literature (Forthcoming)
Review of Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology, by Daniel Dinello, and Color Monitors: The Black Face of Technology in America, by Martin Kevorkian. American Literature. 79.3 (September 2007): 630-32.
“The Beast in the Jungle.” Critical Companion to Henry James: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. Ed. Eric Haralson and Kendall Johnson. Clearmark Books (Forthcoming, October 2008).
GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS and AWARDS
Graduate Fellow, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute “Recycle” Seminar, 2007-08
Northeast Modern Language Association Graduate Award for Paper Presentation, February2007
Mellon Mays Mentoring Grant, Summer 2006 and Summer 2007
Race and Gender Research Award. Women’s Studies, April 2006
Ernestine Friedl Dissertation Research Award. Women’s Studies, April 2006
Duke University Vertical Integration Grant. Project: “Technologies of Vision, Imaginings of Sight: Film, Technology, Literature, and Early-Century Visuality,” Summer 2005
Departmental Fellowship, Duke University, 2003-2006
Phi Beta Kappa
PRESENTATIONS
“Up (Way Up) From Slavery: Climate, Race, and the Case of Matthew Henson.”
Re-thinking Polar Fictions in an Age of Inconvenient Truth Panel, MLA Annual Convention, Chicago, 27-30 December 2007
“The ‘Peculiar Soil’ of Slavery: Race, Climate, and Plantation Eugenics.” Women’s Studies Graduate Colloquium. Duke University, 26 November 2007
“Du Bois’s Ecological Romance: On Technology and the Pastoral.” Blackness and Technology Panel, ASA Annual Convention, Philadelphia, 11-14 October 2007
“Du Bois’s Technorganics.” African American Literature and the Environment Panel,
Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) Annual Meeting, Wofford College, 12-16 June 2007
“Shackled in the Garden.” Plantation America Panel, Northeast Modern Language Association National Convention, Baltimore, 1-4 March 2007
“Black No More?: Race, Ecology, and the Question of New Media.” Thinking Through New Media, Duke University, 7-8 June 2006
“Racial Re-Visions: Radical Forms of Being and Belonging in African American Speculative Fiction.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association National Convention, Atlanta, 4-6 November 2005
“Face Lift Divas: Extreme Plastic Surgery, Nationalized/Televised Bodies, and TV’s Medical Turn.” UCLA Southland Conference: The Popular, UCLA, 20 May 2004
“Fluid Transactions: GATTACA and the Closet(ed) Business of Identity.” Genomics, the Arts and Popular Culture, Duke University, 6 November 2004
“Getting Beyond the Well in The Well of Loneliness.” Allegheny College, ACCEL Lecture Series, 11 April 2003
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Instructor, “In Sickness and Health: Gender and Medicine.” Duke University, Women’s Studies, Summer 2007
Instructor, “Weird Science: Experiments of Fact and Fiction.” Duke University, Department of English, Spring 2007
Teaching Assistant, Dr. Maurice Wallace: “American Literature, 1865-1915.” Duke University, Department of English, Fall 2006
Instructor, Writing 20: Freshman Composition. Duke University Writing Program, Spring 2006
Guest Lecturer, “Designer Babies and Reproductive Technologies” Graduate Seminar: “Bodyworks: Medicine, Technology, and the Body in Early 21st Century America,” Dr. Timothy Lenoir. ISIS, Duke University, Spring 2005 and Spring 2008
Teaching Apprentice, Dr. Sean Metzger: “Restaging the Classics.” Duke University,
Department of English, Spring 2005
Literacy Instructor, Durham Literacy Council, Adult Program. Durham, North Carolina, Spring 2005-Spring 2006; Fall 2007-Present
Teaching Apprentice, Dr. Priscilla Wald: “The Human Genome in Popular Culture.” Duke University, FOCUS Program, Fall 2004
Teaching Assistant, Dr. Jennifer Hellwarth. Freshman Seminar: “Gender and Sexuality,” Allegheny College, Department of English, Spring 2002
Laboratory Assistant, “Introductory Inorganic Chemistry.” Allegheny College, Department of Chemistry, 2000-2001
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE and ACADEMIC SERVICE
Panel Co-organizer, “Blackness and Technology.” ASA Annual Convention, 11-14 October 2007
Seminar Participant. “Re-configurations of American Studies.” Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, 18-24 June 2007
Editorial Collective Member, Polygraph: An International Journal of Culture & Politics
Seminar Participant, “TechnoSphereS: FutureS of Thinking.” Seminar in Experiment Critical Theory, UC-Irvine, 14-25 August 2006
Graduate Student Liaison, Women’s Studies External Review, Spring 2006
Symposium Co-coordinator, “Public Genomics and BioArt.” Duke University, 14 April 2006
Editorial Assistant, American Literature, Fall 2005-Present
Conference Assistant, “Gendering the Diaspora, Race-ing the Transnational: Diasporic Hegemonies.” Women’s Studies, Duke University, 17-19 November 2005
Conference Coordinator, “Genomics, the Arts, and Popular Culture.” Duke University,
5-6 November 2004
Planning Committee, Society for Literature and Science: Annual Meeting 2004. Durham,
North Carolina, 14-17 October 2004
Assistant, New Beginnings Seminar on Culture and Medicine, Fall 2004-Spring 2006
Assistant, Provost Commonfund Group on Race, Gender, Sexuality and the Cultural Study of Medicine. Duke University, Spring 2004
Coordinator, Sex and Science Reading Group. Duke University, Fall 2003-Spring 2004
Member, Women’s Studies Graduate Student Colloquium. Duke University, Fall 2003-
Present.
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Research Assistant, Dr. Robert Mitchell, Assistant Professor of English and Women’s
Studies. Image Licensing for CD-Rom Project, Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information. Summer 2006
Research Assistant, Dr. Priscilla Wald, Professor of English. Book Project, Contagious:
Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. Fall 2005-Spring 2006
Research Assistant, Women’s Studies, Fall 2005
Research Assistant, Dr. Robert Cook-Deegan, Director of the Duke Center for Genome
Ethics, Law and Policy. NHGRI/CEER Grant for the Center for Public Genomics, Summer 2005
Research Assistant, Dr. Jennifer Hellwarth, Assistant Professor of English. Allegheny
College, 2001-2002.