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Derrick R. Spires
Derrick R. Spires
 Reflection on Teaching Ceremony
 The American Studies Sustainability Project

Title: Graduate Student

Department: English

Office: 
Email: derrick.r.spires@vanderbilt.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Degrees

  • MA - English - Vanderbilt University 2005
  • BA - English - Tougaloo College 2004

Research Area

  • Representations of Race and Citizenship in U.S. Literature - 1765-1865
  • American Studies
  • 20th Century African American Literature and Cultures
  • Slave narrative
  • Science Fiction

Current Research

  • Dissertation: "Black Theories of Citizenship in the Early U.S., 1793-1860"
  • Co-chairs: Dana D. Nelson and Teresa A. Goddu; Readers: Ifeoma Nwankwo, Shawn Salvant, and Richard Blackett
  • This study interrogates the dynamic between citizenship, aesthetics, and print practices in the early U.S. through a consideration of African American political writing. Each chapter takes up a specific text or constellation of texts and considers how it contributes to our understanding of the discursive form and structures of African American civic discourse born out of African Americans' struggles to negotiate and re-imagine a "beautiful yet baneful object": citizenship in (and out of) the U.S.
  • Keywords: Citizenship, Aesthetics, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, black state conventions, literary sketch, James McCune Smith, William J. Wilson, Anglo-African Magazine, Martin R. Delany, participatory politics
  • Representations of Race and Citizenship in Popular Media

Current Positions

  • Coordinator, American Studies Sustainability Project

Previous Positions

  • Graduate Teaching Fellow, Vanderbilt University, 2009-2010
  • Research Assistant - Teresa Goddu
  • Graduate Coordinator - Modernist Studies Association Convention, 2008
  • Spring 2007 - Instructor: ENGL 102W; Topic: "Narrative Constructions of Self and Nation."
  • Fall 2006 - Instructor: ENGL 102W; Topic: "The Future's Past...Or...Now as I remember it."
  • Spring 2006 - Writing Studio Consultant: Vanderbilt Writing Studio
  • Fall 2005 - Grader: Introduction to Film Studies
  • Summer 2005 - Consultant: Biostatistics - Jackson Heart Study Science, Language Arts and Mathematics Program

Professional Societies

  • Modern Language Association
  • Richard Wright Circle
  • African American Literature and Culture Society
  • Modernist Studies Association

Professional Honors

  • American Studies Fellow: Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University (2008-2009)
  • Robert M. Greenfield Fellow: Library Company of Philadelphia and Historical Society of Pennsylvania (2008)
  • Peterson Fellow: American Antiquarian Society, Kate B. & Hall J. Peterson Fund (2008)
  • Robert Manson Myers Graduate Award in English: Vanderbilt University(2008)
  • Awarded to the Vanderbilt English Department Ph.D. student whose dissertation prospectus shows the greatest promise for success in the field of English Studies.
  • Oberlin College Archives: Frederick Binkerd Artz Research Grant (2008)
  • Ford Predoctoral Diversity Fellowship (2004-2009)
  • John M. Aden Award for Graduate Student Writing: Vanderbilt University (2007)
  • Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Sciences Summer Research Award (2006, 2007)
  • SSRC-Mellon Mayes Predoctoral Enhancement Grant (2004, 2005)

Publications

  • "Imagining a Nation of Fellow Citizens: Early African American Politics of Publicity" in Early African American Print Culture in Theory and Practice. eds. Lara Langer and Jordan Alexander Stein. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, (forthcoming 2012).
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. A Penguin Enriched eBook Classic. edited with Houston A. Baker, Jr. New York: Penguin, 2009.
  • "Historically Black Colleges and Universities." A Gift of Story and Song: An Encyclopedia on Twentieth Century African American Writers. Ed. Wilfred P. Samuels. New York: Facts on File, 2007.
  • "Truth, Sojourner." A Gift of Story and Song: An Encyclopedia on Twentieth Century African American Writers. Ed. Wilfred P. Samuels. New York: Facts on File, 2007.
  • "Wells-Barnett, Ida B." A Gift of Story and Song: An Encyclopedia on Twentieth Century African American Writers. Ed. Wilfred P. Samuels. New York: Facts on File, 2007.