Rebecca Nisetich, PhD
SHE | HER | HERS
- Associate Professor of English
- Director of Honors
Education
- PhD, English
- MA, English
- BA, English, Anthropology
Research Interests
Twentieth-century American literature, African American literature, Critical Race Theory, law and literature, humor studies, service learning, composition studies.
Rebecca Nisetich is Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine, where she also serves as Director of the institution’s Honors Program. She has published several recent articles on Southern literature, including an essay on Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones in the forthcoming anthology Forgotten Spaces: Environmental Justice and the U.S. South, a queer reading of Light in August in The Faulkner Journal, and two essays in forthcoming Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha editions (Queer Faulkner and Faulkner’s Bodies). Her areas of expertise include race (and antiracism), gender and sexuality, and environmental humanities. She is currently working on a book project that explores the evolving relationships among humans, animals, and the environment, demonstrating how our conceptions of living, being, and making kin have expanded over time to include other-than-human beings. Dr. Nisetich serves as co-editor of The Faulkner Journal and as Vice President of the William Faulkner Society (WFS). From this vantage point, she brings a wealth of knowledge of the realities of Faulkner engagement with both scholars and enthusiasts.
Recently, she has offered courses in the English department on William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, the 19th Century American Novel, and 20th Century Southern Literature. She looks forward to offering courses on African American literature, critical race theory, animal and environmental studies. She loves working with students, and offers opportunities to intern with The Faulkner Journal each year. As the internship program grows, she looks forward to editing a student-driven essay series on The Sound and the Fury (1929), as well as creating a podcast series on Faulkner with WMPG and interns.
Before joining the English department faculty ranks, she was tenured in the Honors Program, where she has been teaching since 2014. She also served as the Honors Program director during this period.
In Honors, she designs and teaches interdisciplinary courses on race and identity, and she oversees Honors internships and the thesis course sequence. She looks forward to strengthening connections between English and Honors, and in developing discipline-specific courses to serve the major and the Public and Professional Writing minor. She is a member of the committee charged with creating the English Honors in the Major pathway.
Selected Publications
- Of Beasts and Burdens: Animals in American Literature, 1838-2011. University Press of Mississippi (in process).
- “Embodying Trauma in William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses.” Faulkner’s Bodies, ed. Jay Watson. Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series, University Press of Mississippi (forthcoming).
- “Familial Ecosystems in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones.” Forgotten Spaces: Environmental Justice and the U.S. South, eds. Katie Simon and Catherine Bowlin. (forthcoming).
- “Queer Ministries: Gender and Sexuality in William Faulkner's Light in August and Louise Erdrich's The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.” Queer Faulkner, eds. Jamie Harker and Jay Watson, Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series, University Press of Mississippi (forthcoming).
- Gleason, K. D., J. Siegfriedt, J. Coreau, R. Nisetich, I. Glenn, and V. Mamgain. (2026). “Bringing anti-oppression pedagogy training into a Predominately White Institution in the United States: A qualitative analysis of the challenges and accelerators faculty face in anti-oppression work.” Journal of Community Psychology, 54(1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.70080
- “Mark Twain and Margaret Garner: The Fugitive Slave Case that Shaped Twain’s Life and Work” (in process).
- “Person/Property: The Invisible Barking Dogs of Pudd’nhead Wilson” Mark Twain Annual (in process).
- “Faulkner’s Future Americans.” Faulkner’s Families, ed. Jay Watson, Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series, University Press of Mississippi (2023).
- “When Difference Becomes Dangerous: intersectional identity formation and the protective cover of whiteness in Faulkner’s Light in August.” The Faulkner Journal issue 31.1 (Spring 2019). pp. 43-66.
- “Reading Race in Nella Larsen’s Passing and the Rhinelander Case.” African American Review, Volume 46.2 (Summer-Fall 2013). pp. 345-361. Honorable Mention, Weixlmann Prize 2015.
- “The Nature of the Beast: Scientific Theories of Race and Sexuality in McTeague.” Studies in American Naturalism, Volume 4.1 (Summer 2009). pp. 1-21. Winner of the Robert H. Elias Graduate Essay Prize.
- “From ‘Shadowy Anguish’ to ‘The Million Lights of the Sun’: Racial Iconography in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.” Kate Chopin in the 21st Century: New Critical Essays. Heather Ostman (Editor). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2008. pp. 121-136.
Education
- PhD, English
- MA, English
- BA, English, Anthropology
Research Interests
Twentieth-century American literature, African American literature, Critical Race Theory, law and literature, humor studies, service learning, composition studies.