Department of English Language and Literature
Directory
Catherine Keyser
Title: | Professor |
Department: | English Language and Literature College of Arts and Sciences |
Email: | catkeyser@sc.edu |
Phone: | 803-576-5957 |
Office: | HUO 305 |
Resources: | English Language and Literature |

Education
PhD, Harvard University 2007
BA, Princeton University 2001
Areas of Specialization
• Modern American Literature
• American Women Writers
• African American Literature
• Periodical Studies
• Gender Studies
• Food Studies
Recently Taught Courses
U.S. Women Writers of the 1920s
Vehicles of Modernity: Transportation Technology and Modern U.S. Literature
Fast and Slow Foods in Modern American Literature
Themes in American Literature: Eat This! Food and Modern U.S. Literature
Professional Accolades
• Margaret Church MFS Memorial Prize for Best Essay, 2017
• Morrison Fellowship, English Department, University of South Carolina, 2016-2017
• Provost Humanities Grant, University of South Carolina, 2014
• Peter and Bonnie McCausland Fellow of English Language and Literature 2013-
• Institute for African American Research Fellowship, University of South Carolina,
2011-12
• Provost Humanities Grant, 2011-12
• Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award 2011 Hartman Center Travel Grant, Duke
University Libraries, 2011
• College of Arts and Sciences Summer Research Stipend, 2011
• Department of English Outstanding Teacher, 2010
Selected Publications
BOOKS
• Artificial Color: Modern Food and Racial Fictions (Oxford University Press, 2019)
• Playing Smart: New York Women Writers and Modern Magazine Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2010)
RECENT ARTICLES
• “Visceral Encounters: Critical Race Studies and Modern Food Literature,” in Food and Literature, ed. Gitanjali G. Shahani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 147-168
• “The New Woman,” in American Literature in Transition, 1920-1930, ed. Ichiro Takayoshi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 101-123
• “Candy Boys and Chocolate Factories: Roald Dahl, Racialization, and Global Industry,”
MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 63.3 (September 2017): 403-428
• “Bottles, Bubbles, and Blood: Jean Toomer and the Limits of Racial Epidermalism,” Modernism/modernity 22.2 (April 2015): 279-302
• “An All-Too-Moveable Feast: Ernest Hemingway and the Stakes of Terroir,” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 2.1 (Winter 2014)
• “The Sweet Tooth of Slavery: Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Walker’s ‘A Subtlety,’” Transition 115 (2014): 143-153
Recent Presentations
• “Seeds of Change: Food, Biodiversity, and the Arts,” ENV 200: The Environmental Nexus,
Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University, March 2018.
• “Satire in the Bardo: George Saunders and Empathetic Irony,” Modern Language Association
(MLA) convention in New York, NY, January 2018
• “Gleaning Fields and Gathering Mushrooms: Gertrude Stein and Food Studies,” Modern
Language Association (MLA) convention in New York, NY, January 2018
• “Changing Color in the Chocolate Factory,” Critical Questions Lecture Series, Oregon
State University, April 2017
• “‘A Ripe and Complete Woman’: Philippa Schuyler, Raw Foods, and Racial Futures,” the
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Colloquium Series, Wake Forest University,
March 2017