The University of Tennessee Southern

Jessica Conrad Assistant Professor in English; Chair of the School of Art and Humanities

Professor Jessica Conrad posing and smiling for a photo on the campus green

Contact Information

Office Address:
School of Arts and Humanities

Phone: 931-363-9826 Ext: 3826

Email: jconrad9@utsouthern.edu

Biography

Dr. Jessica Conrad specializes in 19th and 20th century American literature, women’s studies, African American literature, and environmental humanities. She has received several awards and fellowships, including a Fulbright Scholar grant, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellowship, the Outstanding Composition Instructor Award (2019, Kent State University), and the Sypherd Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in the Humanities.

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Delaware
  • M.A. University of Delaware
  • B.A. West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Publications

  • 2022    Review of Borrowing from Our Foremothers: Reexamining the Women’s Movement through Material Culture, 1848-2017, by Amy Helene Forss. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. Winterthur Portfolio, Winter 2022: pp. 285-287. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/724093
  • 2021    “Bottling Death and Brewing Resistance in Temperance Literature and Reform,” Elusive Archives: Material Culture Studies in Action, eds. Sandy Isenstadt and Martin Brückner, University of Delaware Press, 2021, pp. 280-301. Link: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/delaware/9781644532249/
  • 2020    “Interfering Women: Consumer Activism, Charity, and Women’s Rights in Frances Harper’s Sowing and Reaping,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 144, no. 3, October 2020, pp. 349-374. DOI: 10.1353/pmh.2020.0027 
  • 2018    “‘Polluted Luxuries’: Consumer Resistance, the Senses of Horror, and Abolitionist Boycott Poetry,” American Literature, vol. 90, no. 1, Mar. 2018, pp. 1-26. DOI: 10.1215/00029831-4326379
  • 2017    Curator, “The Fight for Black Mobility: Traveling to Mid-Century Conventions,” Colored Conventions Project, coloredconventions.org, 2017. Link: https://coloredconventions.org/black-mobility/

Awards

2024, Visiting International Scholar, University of Passau
2023, Thoreau Society Marjorie Harding Memorial Fellowship
2022, Fulbright-Botstiber Grant
2021, Gest Fellowship, Haverford College and Special Collections
2019, Outstanding Composition Instructor Award, Kent State University
2019, Wilbur Owen Sypherd Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in the Humanities
2018, Delaware Public Humanities Institute Fellowship
2015, Andrew W. Mellon Short-Term Fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia
2015, Faculty Senate Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award