Doris Witt
Doris Witt grew up in Glasgow, Kentucky, and holds a BA in English from Centre College, an MA and PhD in English from the University of Virginia, and a JD from the University of Iowa. She specializes in post-WWII multiethnic American and transnational / postcolonial literature and culture.
The author of Black Hunger: Soul Food and America, Professor Witt is currently working on scholarly books about American food writing in the neoliberal era and about Vietnamese American literature.
Professor Witt’s (recent and upcoming) course offerings cluster around the topics of food, love, war, and justice, e.g.:
• Reading and Writing about the Novel: Happily Ever After?
• Topics in Transnational Literature: Writers on Food
• Topics in Postcolonial Literature: Reimagining Vietnam
• Topics in Postcolonial Literature: Apocalypse Now and Then
• Selected Transnational Authors: Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie
• Gender, Sexuality and Literature: Reproductive Justice
• Honors Seminar in American Literature: Writing War
• American Literature III: Writing War (graduate level)
• Seminar in 20th and 21st Century Literature: Writers on Food (graduate level)
Having experienced first-hand the many challenges students face when they transition from small-town and / or non-elite backgrounds into what can often feel like the very daunting world of higher education, Professor Witt has continually adapted her teaching and mentoring over the course of her career in an effort to strike a workable balance between holding out high expectations for all students and supporting students as individuals who have varied interests and needs.
Research Interests:
20th and 21st Century American
Transnational
Postcolonial Literature and Culture
