McKee Named Recipient of Prestigious Fulbright Award

   Kathryn McKee, McMullan Assistant Professor of Southern Studies and an assistant professor of English at the University, is the recipient of a Fulbright Award for the 2000-2001 academic year and will teach at the University of Mainz in Germany in the summer.

   McKee, who began teaching at the University of Mississippi in 1997, will instruct German students enrolled in American Studies. During her four-month overseas Fulbright Junior Lectureship, which begins in mid-April, McKee said she anticipates the opportunity to lead classroom discussions about Southern culture and literature abroad.

   “I was flattered to receive the award,” said McKee, a Kentucky native and one of about 2,000 U.S. Fulbright recipients who will travel overseas this year. “It’s a real honor and an exciting opportunity to see my own region from a completely different perspective than the one I’m used to. I have little understanding of what the South would look like to students abroad.” In Germany, she will teach three classes: Introduction to Southern Culture, Southern Women Writers, and Southern Literary Renaissance.

   McKee specializes in Southern literature, especially the work of women writers in the South, and has published scholarship on Kaye Gibbons, Bobbie Ann Mason, female humorists, and, most recently, women writers and their relationship to William Faulkner.

   “Katie McKee is emerging as a new voice in Southern literary studies, and it is no surprise to me that she would be nominated and chosen by the Fulbright Commission to teach Southern literature abroad,” said Joseph Urgo, chair of the University’s English Department.

   McKee, who teaches Introduction to Southern Studies each semester, also teaches sophomore-level Honors English, Survey of American Literature, Southern Literature, and graduate and senior English seminars. She is widely published in journals and essays and will participate in upcoming conferences, including one sponsored by the Society for the Study of American Women Writers in San Antonio, Texas.

   Before her appointment at the University of Mississippi, McKee was an instructor in the Liberal Arts Division at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and a teaching assistant and writing instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in English from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

   The Fulbright program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. For 54 years, Fulbright programs have exchanged nearly a quarter of a million people--86,000 Americans, who have studied, taught or researched abroad and more than 144,000 students, scholars and professionals from other countries who have engaged in similar activities in the U.S.

Deidra Jackson