Caroline Rody

(1996)
Associate Professor
Ethnic American, Caribbean, and Women's Fiction

Degrees

Ph.D. University of Virginia, 1995
M.A. University of Virginia, 1991
B.A. Harvard, 1983

Books

  • The Daughter's Return: African-American and Caribbean Women's Fictions of History, Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • The Interethnic Imagination: Roots and Passages in Contemporary Asian American Fiction. (Under contract with Oxford University Press, expected publication 2009).

Articles

  • "Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange and the Transnational Imagination." Asian North American Identities: Beyond the Hyphen. Ed. Eleanor Ty and Donald C. Goellnicht. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. 130-148.
  • "Impossible Voices: Ethnic Postmodern Narration in Toni Morrison's Jazz and Karen Tei Yamashita's Through the Arc of the Rain Forest." Contemporary Literature 41.1 (2000).
  • "Toni Morrison's Beloved: History, 'Rememory,' and a 'Clamor for a Kiss,'" American Literary History (1995).
  • "The Mad Colonial Daughter's Revolt: J.M. Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country," South Atlantic Quarterly (1994).
  • "Burning Down the House: The Revisionary Paradigm of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea," in Famous Last Words: Changes in Gender and Narrative Closure, ed. Alison Booth (1993) Rpt. in Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea. Norton Critical Edition, Ed. Judith Raiskin (1999).

Reviews

  • Dean Franco, Ethnic American Literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American Writing. American Jewish History, forthcoming summer 2008.

Presentations

  • Introduction, Lecture by Lisa Lowe.  Balch Lecture Series, Department of English, University of Virginia.  February 29, 2008.
  • “The Interethnic Imagination in Contemporary American Fiction.” Fellows’ Seminar, Rothermere American Institute, Oxford University.  May 10, 2007.
  • “Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the African American Slavery Novel Tradition.”
    Department of English, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia. April 4, 2007.
  • “Changing Patterns of Ethnicity and Race in American Literature.” Department of English, University of Zageb, Zagreb, Croatia.  April 2, 2007.
  • “Contemporary Asian American Fiction.” Kaleidoscope: Center for Cultural Fluency/ Inkstone Literary Magazine Celebration. Newcomb Hall, University of Virginia. April 20, 2005.
  • “What Means Switch: Interethnicity and Jewishness in Gish Jen and Zadie Smith.” Invited paper, Duke University Americanist Group, Durham, NC. January 28, 2005.
  • “Effective Strategies to Teach the Elements of Literature.” Two-weekend course for high school teachers. Center for the Liberal Arts, Virginia Beach, VA. September 9-10, 2004, March 4-5, 2005.
  • “Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. “Recovering a Self: Autobriographies of Childhood, Exclusion, or Illness.” Center for the Liberal Arts, Charlottesville, Va.  October 30, 2004. 
  • “What Means Switch? Jewishness in Contemporary Fictional Translation.” Colloquium on “Dreams and Nightmares: Jewish Life and the Experience of Modernity.” Jewish Studies Program, University of Virginia. November 17, 2004.
  • Invited conference participant and workshop collaborator, Archives of the Literature of the Caribbean. Rockefeller Foundation Conference and Study Center, Bellagio, Italy. June 21-26, 2004.
  • “Jewish Housewife, Black Maid: On Reading My Grandmother’s Poems.” Telling Our Stories: Making History Herstory.  Matriarchs and Magnolias: Jewish Women of the South—Agents of Change.  Hadassah Southern Seaboard Region Spring Conference.  Charlottesville, Virginia.  April 24, 2004.
  • “’What Means Switch’? Jewishness in Contemporary Fictional Translation.” Found in Translation.  English Department Conference, University of Virginia.  March 27, 2004.
  • “Contemporary Asian American Fiction: Children of the Multiculture.”  Workshops offered at the East Coast Asian American Student Union Conference.  University of Virginia. February 28, 2004.
  • “Jewelle Gomez: Recovering the History of Black Lesbian Vampires.”  Introduction to the author, reading and talk sponsored by, University of Virginia.  February 21, 2004.
  • “The Interethnic Imagination and Contemporary Jewish American Fiction.” Adult Speakers’ Series.  Congregation Beth Israel, Charlottesville, Virginia.  February 8, 2004.
  • “The Interethnic Imagination in Contemporary Asian American Fiction.” Division on Asian American Literatures panel, “The Future of Asian American Literary Study.”  Modern Language Association Conference, December 2003.
  • “Native Speakers in the American Public Arena: the Novels of Chang-rae
    Lee.”  Introduction to the author, fiction reading sponsored by the Creative
    Writing Department, University of Virginia. September 26, 2002.
  • “Permission to Proceed.” University of Virginia English Department colloquium, “History of the English Department,” September, 2002.
  • “Theories of Ethnicity.” Talk delivered to National Endowment for the Humanities seminar, “Boundary Lines:  Women Rewriting the U.S. South,” directed by Anne Goodwyn Jones.  Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.  June 20, 2002.
  • “On Daughterly Return and New Departures.”  Invited talk, panel on “Women Narrating Minority History.”  Narrative: An International Conference.  Michigan State University, April, 2002. 
  • “New Paradigms in Ethnic American Literature.” University of Virginia English Department conference, “The Future of the Discipline.”  April, 2002.
  • Moderator, “Forms and Social Positions.” University of Virginia English
    Department Conference, “The Settings and Margins of Life-Writing.” February 23, 2002.
  • “Karen Tei Yamashita and the Transnational Imagination.” Division on Asian American Literatures panel, “Asian American Literature in the Americas.”  Modern Language Association Conference, December, 2000.
  • "Reimagining the Mother-of-History: Contemporary Caribbean Women's Fiction."  Caribbean Studies Association, 25th Annual Conference.  Castries, St. Lucia, May 31, 2000.
  • “African American and Caribbean Women’s Historical Fictions.” Sister Talk, with Ann Lane. WTJU, Charlottesville, VA. April 14, 2000.
  • "Interethnicity and Contemporary Asian American Fiction."  Faculty Lecture Series.  Department of English, University of Virginia.  March 31, 2000.
  • Panel Chair, “Writing Lives in South Asia and the Middle East.” Center for South Asian Studies Symposium, University of Virginia, April 24, 1999.
  • "Contemporary American Ethnic Women's Fiction."  University of Virginia Associates Program Roundtable: "American Arts and Letters at Century's End," chaired by President John Casteen.  May 1, 1998.
  • "Narrative Voice, Knowledge, and Desire: On Morrison's Jazz and Yamashita's Through the Arc of the Rain Forest."  Narrative: An International Conference.  Northwestern University, April, 1998.
  • "Carlos Bulosan and America Is In the Heart."  Symposium: Filipino-American Identity.  Organization of Young Filipino-Americans.  Minor Hall, University of Virginia, October 19, 1998.

Academic Honors

  • 2007 Senior Research Fellow, Rothermere American Institute, Oxford University, January – July
  • 2007 Posen Foundation Course Development Grant
    2005, 2003, 2002, 2000, 1997  Summer Faculty Research Grant, University of Virginia
  • 2000 Sesquicentennial Associateship, University of Virginia
  • 2000, 1997 Morse Fellowship Year, Yale University (declined)
  • 1992 Thomas J. Griffis Essay Prize, Department of English, University of Virginia 
  • 1991, 1990 Zora Neale Hurston Essay Prizes, Women's Studies Dept., University of Virginia
  • 1989-1992 DuPont, Stead, and Graduate Arts and Sciences Fellowships, University of Virginia          
    1986-1987 Graduate Scholarship, American Friends of Hebrew University
  • 1983 Radcliffe Summer Fellowship