Faculty Member at
Fisk University
Since 2014, I’ve been a faculty member in the Department of Arts and Languages, Discipline of English at Fisk University in Nashville, TN. I have served as the coordinator of the Gender Studies program since 2015 and the coordinator for the English Discipline since 2020. I am currently the chair of the Arts & Languages department.
At Fisk I teach a wide array of courses, including American literature (pre-1865 and post-1865), American Gothic, and Gender and Sexuality in Literature, as well as courses in the Gender Studies program, including the Introduction to Gender Studies, Utopia/Dystopia: Gender and Sexuality in Literature, and Gender in Comics and Graphic Novels.
As part of my courses, I regularly develop projects in which my students engage with the Fisk University archives and Special Collections, as well as the Fisk University Galleries. Past projects have included the Pauline Hopkins collection, the Charles W. Chesnutt collection, the Charles F. Heartman collection of anti-slavery pamphlets, the Scott Joplin collection, and the Fiskiana collection of university-related materials. Students in my composition courses have also presented their work in the Fisk University Galleries.
In addition to my teaching, I serve as the campus coordinator for the UNCF/Mellon Mays Fellowship Program and an advisor for the annual Fisk University Research Symposium.
for more information:
Courses taught (selected):
American Literature I & II
Intro. to Gender Studies
Gender and Sexuality in Literature
Comics and Graphic Novels
Composition I & II
affiliated organizations and ongoing projects:
CIC, “Legacies of American Slavery” project (faculty representative with Dr. Leslie Collins)
OUT:loud, Gender and Sexuality student organization (advisor)
Fisk Research Symposium (co-chair)
“Becoming North Nashville” (project coordinator)
Fisk Teach-In (co-chair)
I AM Experience (community advisor)
Recent News
Legacies of American Slavery and “Investigating North Nashville”
In 2020, Fisk University was named an institutional affiliate in the CIC Legacies of American Slavery: Reckoning with the Past. This initiative is designed to help CIC member institutions, their students, and their communities explore the continuing impact of slavery on American life and culture. The project supports campus-based research, teaching, and learning as well as community-based programs about the multiple legacies of slavery.
Legacies of American Slavery is directed by Pulitzer-Prize winning historian David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University and executive director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC) at Yale’s MacMillan Center. Blight describes the relevance of the project in a special essay commissioned by CIC: “Because slavery is so central to the history of the United States—its origins, economic development, society, culture, politics, and law—it has left in its wake a wide array of legacies that seem ever-present yet ever-changing in our world.” Full press release here.
Dr. Katharine A. Burnett, along with Dr. Leslie Collins, Associate Professor of Psychology, are the Institutional Representatives for Fisk. Since beginning their work, Drs. Burnett and Collins have collaborated with Sewanee College and partnering CIC institutions to create a series of community archiving courses featuring the North Nashville community. In Spring 2022, they taught “Investigating North Nashville,” in which student groups collaborated with the local Westwood Baptist Church and the Pearl High School Alumni Association to develop a set of community archives that document the history and community in North Nashville.
For more information on the project and class, please see the Colleges Partnering with Communities website through Sewanee College and Dr. Burnett’s guest blog for CIC.
“Becoming North Nashville”
In 2019 Fisk University faculty and staff in the Humanities (English, Special Collections, and University Galleries) were awarded a grant through the Council of Independent Colleges initiative, “Humanities Research for the Public Good.” Through the award, student undergraduate researchers will develop a public art project, titled “Becoming North Nashville,” in conjunction with the local Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet High School. The public exhibit debuted in Spring 2020 and showcased the history of the North Nashville community through the archives at Fisk and MLK.
Description of the project here.