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Maria Seger
Associate Professor of English | University of Louisiana at Lafayette
PO Box 43719 | Lafayette, LA 70504 | 337-482-6970 | maria.seger@louisiana.edu
EDUCATION
PhD, English, University of Connecticut, 2016
MA, English, University of Connecticut, 2012
BA, summa cum laude, English, University of Pittsburgh, 2010
PROFESSIONAL HISTORY
Associate Professor of English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2023–
Undergraduate Studies Coordinator of English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2023–25
Assistant Professor of English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2017–23
Visiting Assistant Professor of English, United States Military Academy at West Point, 2016–17
PUBLICATIONS
Edited Collections
Reading Confederate Monuments. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2022.
Articles
“The Violence of Economies of Dispossession in Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends.” MELUS 49.3 (2024): 26–47.
“Deferred Lynching and the Moral High Ground in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 73.1 (2018): 94–118.
“Ekphrasis and the Postmodern Slave Narrative: Reading the Maps of Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.” Callaloo 37.5 (2014): 1181–95.
Book Chapters
“Challenging Monumentality, Channeling Counter-Monumentality.” Conclusion. Reading Confederate Monuments. Ed. Maria Seger. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2022. 251–54.
“How and Why to Read Confederate Monuments.” Introduction. Reading Confederate Monuments. Ed. Maria Seger. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2022. 3–18.
“Redeeming White Women in/through Lost Cause Films.” Reading Confederate Monuments. Ed. Maria Seger. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2022. 142–65.
Book Reviews
Rev. of American Literature, Lynching, and the Spectator in the Crowd: Spectacular Violence, by Debbie Lelekis. Studies in American Naturalism 11.1 (2016): 102–04.
Monograph Projects
At All Costs: Extralegal Violence and Liberal Democracy in US Culture. Manuscript in preparation.
Killing Them Softly: Motherhood, Violence, and the State in the US Cultural Imaginary. Manuscript in preparation.
PRESENTATIONS
Conference Presentations
“Disciplining the Underclass in Owen Wister’s The Virginian.” Society of the Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Cincinnati, OH, March 2026.
“Rethinking Cajun and Acadian: New Directions in Southwest Louisiana Studies.” Louisiana Historical Association, Lafayette, LA, March 2026.
“Film Technology and the Lynching Narrative in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat.” Modern Language Association, Toronto, Canada, January 2026.
“Doubling and Inheriting in Mark Twain’s American Empire.” American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 2025 (canceled due to university withdrawing funding).
“Lessons from the MLA Workshop on Reimagining Humanities Coursework for Career Readiness.” Modern Language Association, New Orleans, LA, January 2025.
“Community Building against Antiblackness in Cajun Louisiana.” American Studies Association, Baltimore, MD, November 2024.
“The End(s) of Economies of Dispossession in Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends.” Society of the Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Pasadena, CA, March 2024.
“The University as a Site of Constructing/Deploying Cajun and Creole Sameness/Difference.” American Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, November 2023.
“Confronting the Ghosts of Our Past, Present, and Future: Building Names and Race at Two Deep South Campuses.” American Historical Association, New Orleans, LA, January 2022 (canceled).
“Building Renaming on a University Campus: Motivations, Justifications, and Observations.” Louisiana Historical Association, Alexandria, LA, March 2021 (virtual).
“Redeeming White Women in/through Early Lost Cause Films.” Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 2020.
“Extralegal Violence and Economies of Dispossession in the Nineteenth-Century United States.”Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 2020.
“The Poetics of Economies of Dispossession.” American Studies Association, Honolulu, HI, November 2019 (co-organized and chaired).
“Maternal Filicide and the State in Women’s Progressive Era Short Fiction.” American Comparative Literature Association, Washington, DC, March 2019.
“Maternal Filicide and the State in the Interwar Cultural Imaginary.” American Studies Association, Atlanta, GA, November 2018 (co-organized).
“Redeeming White Women as Property in The Birth of a Nation.” American Literature Association, San Francisco, CA, May 2018.
“Tolerating and Coopting Dissent: Examining the State’s Role in (Anti-)Lynching.” American Studies Association, Chicago, IL, November 2017.
“Deferred Lynching and the Moral High Ground.” Futures of American Studies Institute, Hanover, NH, June 2017.
“Extralegal Violence and Liberal-Democratic Governance in Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends.” American Literature Association, Boston, MA, May 2017.
“Convict Labor and the Moral Calculus of the Nineteenth-Century Carceral Economy.” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, January 2017.
“Theft and Self-Protection in the Wild West.” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, Pasadena, CA, November 2016.
“Being or Owning Property? Rethinking White Women’s Role in Multiethnic Lynching Narratives.” Nineteenth Century Studies Association, Lincoln, NE, April 2016.
“Preserving Capitalism in Crisis: Recalling Extralegal Violence in the Post-Reconstruction Era.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Hartford, CT, March 2016.
“Extralegal Rhetoric and the State of Exception in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Harrisburg, PA, April 2014.
“‘No Trespassin’’: The Property-Based Logic of Racial Violence in Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children.” Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Oklahoma City, OK, March 2014.
“Detecting Capital Criminals: The Case of Mistaken Identity in Lynching Narratives.” American Comparative Literature Association, New York, NY, March 2014.
“‘I’ve Been Seeing It Ever Since’: Grievability, Affective Frames, and Lynching as Spectacle in the Post-Reconstruction American Novel.” American Literature Association, Boston, MA, May 2013.
“The Ethics of Child Murder: Maternal Filicide and American Exceptionalism in Women’s Progressive Era Short Fiction.” Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Pittsburgh, PA, March 2013.
“Reading the Two Maps of ‘The Known World’ in Edward P. Jones.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Rochester, NY, March 2012.
“Abandoning the ‘Maternal Instinct’: A Study of Four Canonical Feminist Texts.” College English Association, San Antonio, TX, March 2010.
Invited Presentations
“Structural Antiblackness in Cajun Louisiana.” Histories of the Present Faculty Symposium, Lafayette, LA, November 2025.
“Reading Confederate Monuments in and beyond Lafayette.” Global Souths Conference, Lafayette, LA, March 2023.
“Reframing Your Work for Different Audiences and Modes.” Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Writing and Research Training Program, Los Angeles, CA, July 2021 (virtual).
“Reimagining Graduate Education after COVID.” Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, March 2021 (virtual).
“Extralegal Violence and Liberal Democracy in US Culture.” University of Notre Dame Law School, Notre Dame, IN, November 2020 (virtual).
“Extralegal Violence and Economies of Dispossession in Antebellum Philadelphia.” Global Souths Conference, Lafayette, LA, March 2020 (canceled).
“Program Innovation/Pedagogical Innovation.” Association of Departments of English–Association of Departments of Foreign Languages Summer Seminar, Atlanta, GA, June 2018.
“Race, Resources, and Real Estate.” Modern Language Association Convention, New York, NY, January 2018 (respondent).
“Lessons of the Connected Academics Proseminar on Careers.” Modern Language Association Convention, New York, NY, January 2018.
AWARDS
Joseph P. Montiel and Board of Regents Support Fund (BORSF) Endowed Professorship in English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2025–28
Internal Speaker Research Grant, Flora Levy Humanities Series, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2025
Outstanding Master’s Mentor Award, Graduate School, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2025
Reginald Moore Travel Grant for Research in Activism and Social Justice, Woodson Research Center, Rice University, 2025
Carolyn Dural Memorial Faculty Advising Award, College of Liberal Arts, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2025
Outstanding Doctoral Mentor Award, Division of Research, Innovation, and Economic Development, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2025
Louisiana Project Grant, Louisiana Division of the Arts, 2024–25
Rebirth Grant, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 2024–25
Sustainable Development Research Award, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2024–25
Best Edited Collection, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 2023
Founders’ Award for Humanities Teaching and Research, Friends of the Humanities, 2020
Achievement Medal for Civilian Service, Department of the Army, 2017
Predoctoral Fellowship, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut, 2016
Connected Academics Proseminar Fellowship, Modern Language Association, 2015–16
Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Graduate School, University of Connecticut, 2015
Predoctoral Fellowship, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut, 2015
Aetna Graduate Critical Essay Second Prize, University of Connecticut, 2014
Travel Grant, American Comparative Literature Association, 2014
Aetna Graduate Critical Essay First Prize, University of Connecticut, 2012
Graduate Student Travel Award, Northeast Modern Language Association, 2012
Travel Grant, Institute for Constitutional History, New-York Historical Society, 2011
TEACHING
Courses
English 103: Foundations of Academic Writing
English 104: Foundations of Academic Writing Tutorial
English 205: American Literature to 1865
English 206: American Literature since 1865
English 210: Literary Genres
English 211: Thematic Approaches to Literature
English 212: Literature and Other Media
English 320: Modern and Contemporary Fiction
English 365: Technical Writing
English 371: Ethnic Literatures
English 430G: Topics in Southern Literature
English 433G: Approaches to Black Literature and Culture
English 435G: American Literature, 1865 to 1914
English 490: Senior Seminar
English 496G: Major Literary Figures
English 497G: Special Projects I
English 498G: Special Projects II
English 550: Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
English 596: Research Methods
English 597: Directed Individual Study
English 598: Directed Individual Study
English 599: Thesis Research and Thesis
English 699: Dissertation Research and Dissertation
English 899: Examinations
Honors 285: Topics in the Humanities
Honors 385: Topics in the Humanities
Honors 485: Modern Problems in the Humanities
Humanities 200: Ideas and Issues
Humanities 300: Themes in the Humanities
Humanities 400G: Humanities Colloquium
Certifications
Applying the Quality Matters Rubric for Higher Education, 2023–
ULearn Certified Course Designer, 2023–
ULearn Certified Online Teacher, 2023–
Study Abroad
University of Louisiana at Lafayette Italy Program, 2026
University of Louisiana at Lafayette Paris Program, 2022
SERVICE
University Leadership
Vice President, American Association of University Professors Chapter, 2025
Co-Organizer, Resonance and Groove: Afrofuturism in the US South Symposium, 2024–25
Co-Chair, Equity Caucus, 2020–25
University Committees
A Map to Black Studies Collection Board, 2025
Advising Council, 2023–25
Task Force on Building Names, 2020–22
College Leadership
Co-Organizer, Critical Black Studies Working Group and Speaker Series, 2021–22
College Committees
Gender and Sexuality Studies Minor Committee, 2020–25
Humanities Program Committee, 2022–25
Ernest J. Gaines Center Books from the Bayou Committee, 2018–25
Black and African Diaspora Studies Minor Committee, 2017–25
Department Leadership
Chair, English Majors Committee, 2023–25
Chair, Undergraduate Course Offerings Committee, 2023–24
Co-Chair, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization Committee, 2019–21
Department Committees
Ecocriticism Search Committee, 2024–25
Assessment Committee, 2023–25
Awards and Recognitions Committee, 2023–25
Executive Committee, 2023–25
Graduate Course Offerings Committee, 2023–25
Undergraduate Literature Concentration Committee, 2022–25
Black Literature and Culture Search Committee, 2022–23
English Majors Committee, 2022–23
Personnel Committee, 2022–23
PhD Exam Committee, 2022–23
Ad Hoc Committee on Graduate Program Mission, 2020–21
Graduate Advising Committee, 2021–22
Black Literature and Culture Search Committee, 2020
Gender and Sexuality Studies Committee, 2019–25
Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions Workload and Diversity, 2019
American Literature Search Committee, 2019
MA Exam Committee, 2018–25
Graduate Recruitment Committee, 2018–22
Undergraduate Curriculum and Course Offerings Committee, 2017–25
Graduate Placement Committee, 2017–20, 2024–25
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization Committee, 2017–21
Symposium Committee, 2017–18
Graduate Exam Committees
American Literature since 1945, 2021–22
American Literature 1865 to 1945, 2020–22
Feminist Theory and Criticism, 2020–22
Southern Literary Studies, 2020–22
Africana Studies, 2019–22
American Literature to 1865, 2018–22
Academic Advising
Undergraduate Advisor, Department of English, 2017–19, 2022–25
Graduate Advisor, Department of English, 2019–22
Dissertation, Thesis, and Exam Advising
Nazlican Cafcav, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee chair.
Charlene Caruthers, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.
Chalyn Smith, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee chair.
Safi Ullah, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.
Aliyah Watkins, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee chair.
Cheylon Woods, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.
Ammrito Lal Roy, “Narrative Adaptability in Social Media: A Study of Storytelling Practices in Reddit’s Political Communities,” 2025, thesis committee member.
Noah Smith, “The Voice of Professional Writing: A Professional Writing Portfolio,” 2025, thesis committee member.
Sarah Stevens, 2025, MA exam committee member.
Amélie Broussard, “‘I Must Have Justice, or I Will Destroy Myself’: An Investigation of Ethics, Legal Punishment, and the Judicial System in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov,” 2024, thesis committee member.
Morgan Christie, “I and I: An Integrated Theory of First- and Second- Generation People’s Journey toward Oneness and a Short Story Collection Titled Down Black Creek Way,” 2024, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.
BJ Flowers, “Reproductive Identity in Speculative Fictions,” 2024, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.
Hailey Hanks, “Far Out: An Original Memoir Manuscript, with an Essay on the Truncated Child in Contemporary Pregnancy Loss Memoir,” 2024, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.
Brandi Hanna, “stutter and ‘In Search: A Wynterian Reading of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen,’” 2024, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.
Melanie Johnson, “Examining the Effects of Violent Communal Affect in Works by Butler, Morrison, and Ward through Contemporary Black Feminism,” 2024, dissertation committee chair.
Queen Kanu, “‘At Home in the World’: Material Culture and Contemporary Africana Women’s Literature,” 2024, dissertation committee chair.
Raquel Thorne, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Racial Ideology, the Sentient Doll, and Imagined Souths,” 2024, dissertation committee chair.
Faryal Atif, 2023, MA exam committee member.
Delicia Daniels, “Lucy Terry-Prince: A Case for Neglected Civil and Criminal Law Origins in Black Literature and Abolition Chronicles,” 2023, dissertation committee member.
Jaleesa Harris, “The Black Gothic: A Framework to Extend Black Studies through Property and Reparations,” 2023, dissertation committee chair.
Kym Cunningham, “Materiality or Future Ghosts: How Black Maternal Fugitivity Speculates the Archive and We Myths Bite,” 2022, dissertation committee member.
J Catt Evans, “Survivance and Healing the Soul Wound through Indigenous Poetry and I Wrote What I Couldn’t Say,” 2022, dissertation committee member.
Iesha Newton, “Behind the Scenes: A Study of Black Women as Filmmakers and Television Producers,” 2022, thesis committee member (communications).
Khirsten Doolan, “The Blood of the Covenant: A Queer Southern Literary Genealogy,” 2021, dissertation committee member.
Jeanna Mason, “Navigating the Spaces: The Influences of Place and Space in Twentieth-Century Post-Plantation Novels,” 2021, dissertation committee member.
Steven Jaindl, 2020, MA exam committee chair.
Wes Jamison, 2020, PhD exam committee member.
Patrick Lewis, “Ambivalence à la Carte: Masculinity in the Contemporary Ethnic American Bildungsroman,” 2020, dissertation committee member.
Jordan McClements, 2020, MA exam committee chair.
Jennifer Morrison, “Long Revision: Contemporary African American Fiction of the Gulf South,” 2020, dissertation committee chair.
Jade Rouchon, 2020, MA exam committee member.
Gina Warren, “Affective Representations of ‘Chicken(s)’ in American Literature in the 20th and 21st Centuries and The Chicken Underground: Adventures in Food Politics,” 2020, dissertation committee member.
Aleya Washington, “Sport H(a)unting Blackness in (Neo) Slave Narratives and Contemporary Works,” 2020, thesis committee chair.
Francisco J. Farrera, “The Celebration of Cultural Diversity: An Architectural Proposal Inspired in Music,” 2019, thesis committee member (architecture).
Jude Marr, “Bird on Barbed Wire and Translation as Loss: Liminality, Symbiosis, and the Afro-Creole Poets of Civil War Era New Orleans,” 2019, dissertation committee member.
Matthew M. Pincus, “Talented and Expendable: American Women Crime Writers of the 1940s and 50s,” 2019, dissertation committee member.
Wandeka Gayle, “Desire, Displacement, Disillusionment: The Afro Caribbean Immigrant Experience in America and Motherland and Other Stories,” 2018, dissertation committee member.
Graduate Assistant Supervision
Ladi Opaluwa, Research Assistant, Summer 2025
Negar Noofeli, Service Assistant, Spring 2025
Amélie Broussard, Teaching Assistant, Spring 2023
Queen Kanu, Teaching Assistant, Spring 2021
Aleya Washington, Teaching Assistant, Fall 2019
Professional
Certification, External Reviewer, Association of Departments of English, 2025
Leadership Certification, Imagining a Curriculum for the Future of the Humanities, Modern Language Association Academic Program Services Leadership Institute, 2024
Participant, Reimagining Humanities Coursework for Career Readiness Workshop, Modern Language Association, 2024
Peer Reviewer, Twentieth-Century Literature, 2024–
Peer Reviewer, Mississippi Quarterly, 2023–
Peer Reviewer, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2021–
Peer Reviewer, Studies in the Novel, 2019–
Founding Organizer, Graduate Employee Union–United Auto Workers Local 6950, 2014–15
PUBLIC-FACING WORK
Writing
“Information Exchange: Thinking of Networking as Learning.” Connected Academics. Modern Language Association, 21 Dec. 2015.
With Todd Vachon and Gayatri Phadke. “In First Contract, UConn Grad Assistants Win Raises and Much More.” Labor Notes, 31 July 2015.
“Six-Month Anniversary of the Formation of the Graduate Employee Union–UAW at UConn.” Op-ed. Connecticut AFL–CIO, 17 Oct. 2014.
Invited Presentations
“Black Criminalization and Carceral Labor in the New South.” Gloria Fiero Lecture, Humanities Program, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, September 2024.
“A Roundtable on Reading Confederate Monuments.” Ernest J. Gaines Center, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, LA, November 2022.
“Lynching and Policing in Lafayette, Louisiana.” Public Symposium on Racial Justice, College of Liberal Arts, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, September 2020 (virtual).
“Dismantling Structural Racism.” Perspectives 360: Reimagining Civil Society, Lafayette, LA, March 2018.
“The Jim Crow Monuments Controversy.” Constitution Day, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, September 2017.
Context Learning Seminars
“Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick,” 2021–22
“Contemporary Black Women’s Writing,” 2020–21
Context Learning Lectures
“Louisa May Alcott’s America,” 2021–22
“Mark Twain’s America,” 2021–22
“Walt Whitman’s America,” 2021–22
“The Thirteenth Amendment and the Project of Freedom,” 2020–22
“Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in Context,” 2020–21
“Confederate Monuments Then and Now,” 2020–21
“Introduction to Contemporary Black Women’s Writing,” 2020–21
“The Ku Klux Klan and White Supremacy in the United States,” 2020–21
“Slavery on Film,” 2020–21
“White Supremacist Insurrection and the Wilmington Coup d’Etat of 1898,” 2020–21
“The Women of the Harlem Renaissance,” 2020–21
Media Appearances
Interview by Alena Maschke. “Visa Revocations Stoke Fear at UL as Confusion Reigns,” Current, April 2025.
Interview by Cheryl Devall. Après-Midi, KRVS 88.7 FM Radio Acadie, February 2025.
Interview by Piper Hutchinson. “‘Structural and Individual Forces’ Create Faculty Gender Pay Gap at Louisiana Universities,” Louisiana Illuminator, August 2024.
Interview by Ramudhi Kariyawasam. “The Ongoing Racist History of the South Reflected in Our Campus Building Names,” Vermillion, April 2024.
Interview by Pearson Cross. Bayou to Beltway, KRVS 88.7 FM Radio Acadie, May 2021.
Interview by Pearson Cross. Bayou to Beltway, KRVS 88.7 FM Radio Acadie, March 2021.
“The Bones of Texas History,” TwoStonians Podcast, May 2019.
Service
Construction Volunteer, Habitat for Humanity Lafayette, 2024–
Kitchen Volunteer, St. Joseph’s Diner, 2024–
Cocktail Tent Volunteer, Festival International de Louisiane, 2021–
Big Sister, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Acadiana, 2018–
Member, Equal Justice Initiative Coalition, Lafayette Parish, 2018–
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
American Association of University Professors
American Studies Association
Modern Language Association
Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
Maria Seger 