NICOLE A. SPIGNER
118 S. 11th Street, B
Nashville, TN 37206
(615) 650-8055
(615) 336-0063
Department of English
Vanderbilt University
Box 1654 B
Nashville, TN 37235
nicole.a.spigner@vanderbilt.edu
EDUCATION
Ph.D. Vanderbilt University, candidate
o Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies, Vanderbilt Women’s and Gender Studies
Program (completed Spring 2013)
M.A.
Vanderbilt University, August 2010, English Literature
M.A.
University of Pennsylvania, May 2009, English Literature
B.A.
University of Pennsylvania, August 2007, English Major
DISSERTATION
Classicism and Classical Allusion in African American Women’s Writing from 1880-1910
This project argues how, while creating a new tradition at the end of the nineteenth century, African
American New Women writers utilized “the master’s tools” of classical allusions, plots, and forms,
to undermine national narratives grounded in American Neoclassicism and the republican vision of
the American Founders that denied them full citizenship. Through classical allusions, unfulfilled
romantic plots, reconfigured fairy tales, and the figure of the “mulatta/o,” proto-modern African
American women writers tore away literary convention, gender configurations, and static racial
identities, giving rise to a new genre of deconstructionist fiction. The classics, particularly paired
with stories of women who belatedly discover their black identities, render legible the instabilities of
whiteness as phenotype, the very anxieties resulting in the racial tensions, economic and political
flux, and increased violence of the late nineteenth century. Revisiting and considering the literary
histories into which she intervenes, my project considers how turn-of-the-century gendered black
classicism strips away layers of genre and deconstructs assumptions about the literary, raced
gendered subjectivity, and black female authorship.
Committee:
Hortense J. Spillers (Chair)
Colin Dayan
Lynn Enterline
Ifeoma Nwankwo
Patrice Rankine
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FELLOWSHIPS & AWARDS
Dissertation Year Fellowship, Vanderbilt English Department (2013-2014)
Provost’s Graduate Fellowship, Vanderbilt University (2009-present)
Dissertation Enhancement Grant, Vanderbilt Graduate School (2013)
Summer Research Award, Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science (2013)
Intensive Program of the Graduate Certificate in Advanced Learning and Leadership (GCALL), The
University of Melbourne, sponsorship by Vanderbilt Dean’s Office, College of Arts & Science
(September 2012)
Institute for World Literature, Peking University, Beijing, China, partial sponsorship by Vanderbilt
English Department (Summer 2011)
Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth, sponsorship by Vanderbilt American Studies
Department (Summer 2010)
PUBLICATIONS AND WRITING
Works in Progress:
The Tragihero and His Golden Foil: Masculinity, Exile, Shame, and Suicide in James Baldwin’s Another
Country and Sophocles’ Ajax
TEACHING AND ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT
Graduate Instructor, Vanderbilt English Department (2010-2013)
Graduate Research Assistant to Dr. Hortense Spillers, Vanderbilt English Department (2010present)
Graduate Assistant to the Speakers’ Committee, Vanderbilt English Department (2010- 2011 school
year)
Graduate Research Assistant to Dr. Herman Beavers, University of Pennsylvania English
Department (September 2007-May 2008)
Research Assistant to Dr. Marsha Fausti, University of Pennsylvania English Department
(September 2001-May 2002)
Courses Taught (full instructional responsibility):
English 104W
“Mythmaking and the American Imagination,” Prose Fiction: Forms and
Techniques (Spring 2013)
English 100
“Election Year,” Composition (Fall 2012)
English 102W
“Bad Girls, Handmaids, & Martyrs: Feminist Literature and Theory Since
the 1400s,” Literature/Analytical Thinking, applicable also for credit towards
Women & Gender Studies major and minor (Fall 2011, Spring 2012)
English 102W
“Speculative Narratives of the Other,” Literature/Analytical Thinking
(Spring 2011)
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English 102W
“Speculative Fictions: Narratives of Nation, Utopias, and Dystopias,”
Literature/Analytical Thinking (Fall 2010)
Guest Lectures:
“Real and Imagined Slavery in Samuel Delaney’s ‘The Tale of Small Sarg.’” Philosophy 235: Gender
and Sexuality, Vanderbilt University. November 2011.
PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS
Invited Talks:
“The past to explore, the future to reveal”: Toward a Black Feminist Reading of Phillis Wheatley's
“Niobe in Distress,” University of Colorado-Denver, September 2013.
Conference Presentations:
“The Sex, Slavery, and Salvation: Women Healers in Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads and Wild Seed
by Octavia Butler.” To be presented at Sixth International Conference of Caribbean Women's
Writing, Comparative Critical Conversations, London, England, July 2011.
“‘Chain of Fools’: Poe's Trickster Tale.” Presented at the American Comparative Literature
Associate 2010: “Creoles, Diasporas, Cosmopolitanisms,” during the “Cosmopolitan Poe”
seminar, New Orleans, LA, April 2010.
“The Fantastic Feminine: Blackness, Desire and the Witch in the Works of Maryse Condé and Kara
Walker.” Presented at the 2009 SAMLA Convention during the “African American Women and
Spirit Work” paper panel, Atlanta, GA, November 7, 2009.
Conference participant, Vanderbilt English Department First Year Conference, co-sponsored by
Vanderbilt Graduate Student Council, April 2010.
UNIVERSITY & PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Rheney Speaker Committee Chair, English Graduate Student Association, Vanderbilt University
(2013-2014 school year)
Henrietta Morgan Memorial Award Committee, Vanderbilt Undergraduate Writing Program (April
2013)
Editorial Collective Member, The A-Line Journal, (2011-present)
Teaching & Professionalization Liaison, English Graduate Student Association, Vanderbilt
University (2011-2012 school year)
Editorial Board, Arkansas Literary Review, University of Arkansas (2009-2011)
Conference Organizer, Issues in Critical Investigation Fall Symposium, sponsored by Hortense
Spillers, Vanderbilt English Department, and various departments across the Vanderbilt
community (October 2011)
Conference Organizer, “Slavery, Political Culture, and the Archive,” an interdisciplinary symposium
sponsored by Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt English Department, and various departments across the
Vanderbilt community (March 2011)
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Editorial Collective Member, Culture Feature Editor, Copy Editor, and Contributor, The Feminist
Wire, thefeministwire.com (2010)
Conference Organizer, Vanderbilt English Department First Year Conference, co-sponsored by
Vanderbilt Graduate Student Council (April 2010)
ORGANIZATIONAL AFFILIATIONS
MLA, Member
ASA, Member
ACLA, Member
SAMLA, Member
FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Reading knowledge of Spanish.
ADDITIONAL WORK EXPERIENCE
Assistant to National Director of Business Development and Marketing, KlingStubbins,
Philadelphia, PA (2006-2007)
Compliance Specialist, ACE USA, Accident and Health Compliance Department, Philadelphia, PA
(2002-2007)
Administrative Assistant, CIGNA Group Insurance, Philadelphia, PA, (2001-2002)
Regional Manager, Color, Inc., Philadelphia, PA (1999-2001)
MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES OR MEMBERSHIPS
Assistant Editor, Yoga Page, AllThingsHealing.com (2010-2012)
Graduate Associate, Harnwell House, University of Pennsylvania (2007-2008)
Yoga Research Society, Conference and Program Coordinator. (2005-2008)
Pan African Studies Community Education Program (PASCEP), GED Teacher. (2002-2004)
Women’s Anti-Violence Education (WAVE), Fundraiser and Self-Defense Program graduate. (2003)