In celebration of national Arts and Humanities Month last October, the College of Liberal Arts named Kathryn McKee the Mississippi Humanities Council’s 2001 Humanities Teacher at Ole Miss. She is McMullan assistant professor of Southern Studies and assistant professor of English.

The award includes a $500 honorarium and requires the recipient to present a lecture. McKee’s lecture, presented at Barnard Observatory in October, was titled "Honey, Yer Ain’t Half as Smart as Yer Thinks Yer Is: Race and Humor in Sherwood Bonner’s Short Fiction."

"The lecture on Sherwood Bonner, a 19th-century local color writer from Holly Springs, Mississippi, afforded McKee a chance to demonstrate her abilities as a lecturer and researcher," said Michael P. Dean, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts. "The lecture celebrated he humanities while honoring and showcasing McKee."

Recognition is nothing new for McKee. Last spring, she won the Cora Lee Graham Award for Teaching of Freshman Students and was also the recipient of a Fulbright Junior Lectureship. As a Fulbright Scholar, she taught Southern literature and culture classes at the University of Mainz in Germany.