Michelle Hite, Ph.D.

Michelle Hite, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Honors Program Director, International Fellowships and Scholarships Director
Ethel Waddell Githii Honors Program, Faculty, Literature, Media and Writing

Contact Info
404-270-5612
Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby, Ed.D. Academic Center 318

Tag(s): english, Literature, Media and Writing, faculty

Biography

Michelle Hite, Ph.D. has been a faculty member since 2004. She is an associate professor for English, the director for the Honors Program and director of International Fellowships and Scholarships.

Dr. Hite earned her Ph.D. from Emory University in American/African American Studies in 2009. Her dissertation used Venus and Serena Williams as subjects whose representation in popular media, books, videos, and other texts prompted her research questions regarding what their public portrayal might suggest about the intersection of race, gender, and nationalism during late capitalism.

Although Dr. Hite remains deeply interested in sports, her intellectual work now focuses on African-American life, culture, and experience in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. To this end, she is currently working on a monograph about the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. In addition to her work as an associate professor in the English department at Spelman, Dr. Hite is director of the Ethel Waddell Githii Honors Program and director of International Fellowships and Scholarships.

 

Education

  • Ph.D., Emory University

  • M.S., University of Kentucky

  • B.A., University of Kentucky

Courses Taught

  • ENG 347: Emmett Till: The Cultural (After) Life of an American Boy

  • ENG 422: Except Sunday: African American Working Class Culture

  • ENG 441B: Toni Morrison Seminar

Research Interests

Death and Mourning in African American Culture; Toni Morrison

Select Publications

"Beyonce, Black Motherhood, and the Return of Wrenching Times." Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics. Volume 3 Issue 1-2: 10 Sep 2019.

“Andre’s Dread: Communicating Survival of Racial Terror.” Phylon 54.2. Special Volume on Hip Hop Culture and Rap Music Aesthetics in the Post-Civil Rights South, 28-40. Winter 2017.

News & Notes

Survive and Advance: A BOTM Extended Play Bottom of the Map podcast on NPR was chosen for an extended play.

Amy Sherald interview for Art Papers Live

Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching (2018)