K.S. Roberts, PhD

Academic Employment

University of Groningen        
Assistant Professor, Program in American Studies, 2018-

Harvard University                
Lecturer, Department of English, 2017
Head Teaching Fellow, Arts & Humanities, 2016-2017

Education

Harvard University                 
Ph.D., English, 2016
M.A., English, 2011

Duke University                      
B.A., English, Summa cum laude, 2007

Teaching and Research Specialties
Modern American Literature and Culture; Literature and Social Form; Critical Theory; Media Aesthetics; Podcasts; Feminist and Queer Theory; African-American Literature

Grants, Fellowships, and Awards

• American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow, 2019-2020
• Vermont Studio Center Artist’s Grant, 2018
• Francis James Child Prize for Excellence in Teaching (Harvard 2013)
• Derek Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (Harvard 2010, 2011, 2017)
• Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2015)
• Dexter Fellowships for Dissertation Research (2012 & 2014)
• American Literature Essay Prize (Duke 2007)

Publications

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Writing ‘Other Spaces’: Katherine Anne Porter’s Yaddo,” Modernism/modernity 22.4 (November 2015): 735-57.
• “Colony Writing: Creative Community in the Age of Revolt,” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2016
• “Richard Wright and Masculinity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Richard Wright, edited by Glenda Carpio (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
• “Our Town, the MacDowell Colony, and the Art of Civic Mediation.” American Literary History, forthcoming Fall 2019

Work in Progress

• The New Monastics: Creative Community and Literary Form (book manuscript in draft)

Public Presentations

Invited Talks

• “The New Monastics: Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Vocation of Writing,” University of Iowa Department of English, April 2019

Panels Organized

• Gateways and Gatekeepers: American Institutions Abroad, Associazione Italiana di Studi Nord-Americani Biennial Conference (AISNA), Ragusa, Italy, September 2019
• The List: Literary Information and Questions of Value with Harry Stecopoulos (Iowa), Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, New Orleans, LA, October 2018
• Varieties of Institutional Experience with Scott Selisker (Arizona) and Thom Dancer (Toronto), Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, Oakland, CA, October 2017 | Respondent: Mark McGurl (Stanford)

Conference Papers

• “Art.org: On the U.S. Origins of European Artist Residencies" Associazione Italiana di Studi Nord-Americani Biennial Conference (AISNA), Ragusa, Italy, September 2019
• “Art.org: Residency Culture in the Age of Austerity,” International American Studies Association World Congress (IASA), Alcalá de Henares, Spain, July 2019
• "Inspiration Machines: Writers’ Colonies and the Evidence of the Guest List," Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, New Orleans, LA, October 2018
• “Bespoke Institutions: What can Writers’ Colony tell us about Literary Value(s)?” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, Oakland, CA, October 2017
• “Middlebrow Literature and the Virtues of Gullibility,” American Comparative Literature Association, Utrecht, NDL, July 2017
• “Hotels, Heterotopias, and Historicism: Modernist Fiction from the Swanky Monastery,” Modernist Studies Association, Pasadena, November 2016
• “Introduction: Colony Writing,” New England Americanist Colloquium, Harvard University, June 2016
•  “The Making of Middlebrow Form: from the MacDowell Colony to Our Town,” New England Americanist Colloquium, Harvard University, June 2015
•  “Thornton Wilder, Community Man: The MacDowell Colony and the Formation of Middlebrow Theater,” American Comparative Literature Association, Seattle, April 2015  *Nominated for Horst Frenz Prize, awarded to best paper presented by a graduate student
• “Stein’s Paris, Porter’s Yaddo,” Gender & Sexuality Workshop, Harvard University, October 2014
• “Writing ‘Other Spaces,’” New England Americanist Colloquium, Brown University, June 2014
• “‘Go Little Book’: Childrearing, Affective Labor, and Southern Authorship,” Modern Language Association, Chicago, January 2014
• “The Immaterial Labor of the Writers’ Colony: Ship of Fools as Allegory of Creative Work,” American Comparative Literature Association, Toronto, April 2013
• “Katherine Anne Porter: Art Fiction and the Economics of Mid-Century Literary Celebrity,” American Literature Association, San Francisco, May 2012