In Unruly Tongue Dr. Cutter examines the work of ten Anglo American and African American female writers to discover the evolving woman's "voice." Beginning in the 19th century, American female authors, including Louisa May Alcott and Fanny Fern, developed language usage in response to the white male-centered world of publishing that did not allow for women or minorities to have recognizable voices.
Moving into the end of the 19th century and during the early
20th century, female writers built on the work of their predecessors to
further break the link between the prevailing masculine racist
worldviews. Dr. Cutter's book highlights the work of Kate Chopin and
Willa Cather as two examples of
authors who utilized a language that was empowering, maternal, and
unique to women writers. The "unruly tongue" that these authors used
set in motion a change in the status of women and minorities in
American culture and literature.
Here are the highlights of her Curriculum Vita and Career.
EDUCATION
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
· Kent State
University,
Associate Professor of English, 1999-Present
· Kent State University,
Assistant Professor of English, 1994-1999
PUBLICATIONS: BOOKS
Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1850-1930 (Jackson: The University of Mississippi Press, 1999). This book explores how nineteenth and twentieth-century Anglo-American and African American women writers reconfigure their relationship to dominant discourses. It includes discussions of the writings of Harriet Wilson, Fanny Fern, Louisa May Alcott, Frances Harper, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna Julia Cooper, Willa Cather, and Jessie Fauset.
A World of Words: Translation and Multilingual Identity in Ethnic American Literature (in progress). This book focuses on the trope of translation in contemporary Asian American, Mexican American, Native American, African American, and Anglo-American fiction. Authors include: David Wong Louie, Fae Myenne Ng, Maxine Hong Kingston, John Okada, Cynthia Kadohata, Leslie Marmon Silko, N. Scott Momaday, Sherman Alexie, Susan Power, Sandra Cisneros, Richard Rodriguez, Cherrie Moraga, Sherley Anne Williams, A.J. Verdelle, Toni Morrison, Danzy Senna, William Styron, and Barbara Kingsolver.
PUBLICATIONS: BOOK CHAPTERS, ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
“Empire and the Mind of the
Child: Sui Sin Far’s ‘Tales of Chinese Children,’” MELUS 27.2
(special issue on Ethnic
Children’s Literature, ed.
Margaret Higonnet and Katherine Capshaw Smith) (forthcoming, Summer
2002).
“Smuggling Across the Borders of Race, Gender and Sexuality: Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance,” Mixed-Race Literature, ed. Jonathan Brennan (Stanford University Press, 2002): 137-164.
“The Writer as Doctor: New Models of Medical Discourse in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Later Fiction,” Literature and Medicine 20. 2 (Fall 2001): 151-182.
“Philomela Speaks: Alice Walker’s Re-Visioning of Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple,” MELUS 25.3-4 (Fall/Winter 2000) 161-180.
"The Story Must Go On and On: The Fantastic, Narration, and Intertextuality in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jazz,"African American Review 34.1 (Spring 2000): 61-75.
"Of Metatexts, Metalanguages, and Possible Worlds: The Transformative Power of Metanarrative in C.P. Gilman's Later Short Fiction," American Literary Realism 31 (1998): 41-59.
"Becoming a Desiring Subject: Alternative Aesthetic 'Bodies' in African American Women's Fiction," Proceedings of the National Association of African American Studies, selected and ed. Lemuel Berry (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1997). 261-278.
"An Impossible Necessity: Translation and the Recreation of Linguistic and Cultural Identities in Contemporary Chinese American Literature," Criticism 39 (Fall 1997): 581-612.
"Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's Two New England Nuns" (Reprint), Mary Wilkins Freeman: A Study of the Short Fiction, ed. Mary Reichardt (London: Prentice Hall, 1997). 179-195.
"Sliding Significations: 'Passing' as a Narrative and Textual Strategy in Nella Larsen's Fiction," Passing and the Fictions of Identity, ed. Elaine K. Ginsberg (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996). 75-100.
"Dismantling 'The Master's House': Critical Literacy in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl," Callaloo 19.1 (Winter 1996): 209-225.
"If It’s Monday This Must Be Melville: A Canon, Anti-Canon Approach to Revising the American Literature Survey Course," The Canon in the Classroom: the Pedagogical Implications of Canon Revision in American Literature, ed. John Alberti (New York: Garland, 1995). 119-151.
"Zitkala-Sa's Autobiographical Writings: the Problems of a Canonical Search for Language and Identity in Native American Writing," MELUS 19.1 (Spring 1994): 31-44.
"Losing the Battle but Winning the War: Women's Relationship to Discourse in Kate Chopin's Short Fiction," Legacy 11.1 (1994): 7-36.
"Beyond Stereotypes: Mary Wilkins Freeman's Radical Critique of Nineteenth-Century Cults of Femininity," Women's Studies 21 (1992): 383-95.
"Frontiers of Language: Engendering Discourse in 'The Revolt of Mother,'" American Literature 63.2 (June 1991): 279-91.
"Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's Two New England Nuns," Colby Quarterly 26.4 ( 1990): 213-25. Reprinted in Mary Wilkins Freeman: A Study of the Short Fiction, ed. Mary Reichardt (London: Prentice Hall, 1997).
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
“Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge,” Asian-American Playwrights: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook,” ed. Miles X. Liu (forthcoming, Greenwood Press, 2002).
Review of Quiet As It’s Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison, by J. Brooks Bouson. African American Review 35.4 (2001): 672-673.
"In Short: New Approaches to the Study of American Women's Writing," (Book Review Column); Legacy 16.2 (Winter 1999): 211-212.
"In Short: Internet and Web Resources for the Study of American Women's Writing," (Book Review Column; co-written with Lisa Brawley), Legacy 15.1 (Spring 1998): 121-124.
"In Short: Expanding the Parameters of What We Teach," (Book Review Column), Legacy 14.2 (Winter 1997): 163-64.
"In Short: New Interdisciplinary and Multi-Cultural Approaches to American Women's Writing," (Book Review Column), Legacy 14.1 (1997): 73-74.
"Canon," and "Language, " Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory, ed. Beth Kowaleski-Wallace (New York: Garland, 1997): 63-65 and 229-230.
"Writers' Lives Reflect Racism's Legacy," review of Living Our Stories, Telling Our Truths: Autobiography and the Making of the African-American Intellectual Tradition, by V.P. Franklin, The Plain Dealer (April 2, 1995): 11-J.
"Fragmentation and Unification, Myth and Metaphor," review of Mythmaking and Metaphor in Black Women's Fiction, by Jaqueline de Weever and Alice Walker, by Donna Winchell, African American Review 28.4 (1994): 665-669.
Review of A Web of
Relationship: Women in the Short Fiction of Mary Wilkins Freeman,
by Mary Reichardt and The Uncollected Stories of Mary Wilkins
Freeman, ed. Mary Reichardt, Legacy 10.2 (1993): 151-153.
INVITED TALKS
“Beyond Ebonics? A Translation Perspective on African American Literature,” Cleveland State University, English Department Colloquium, Oct. 2001.
“Unruly Tongues: Women’s Voices in American Literature and Culture,” Barnes and Noble Bookstore, Akron Ohio, March 2001
“The Cult of True Womanhood, Silence, and African American Identity,” University of Akron Women’s Studies Forum, March 2000
“Unruly Tongues: Women’s Voices in the Nineteenth Century and in Our Own Era,” American Association of University Women, Kent State University, March 2000
“Race and The College Curriculum,” President’s Talks on Race, Kent State University, Oct. 1999
“[How] Does Race Matter in Teaching?” Faculty Interdepartmental Colloquium on Race, Kent State University, March 1999.
“The Story Must Go on: Storytelling and Intertextuality in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Jazz,” Akron University English Department Colloquium, Fall 1998
“On Being an English Professor,” Sigma Tau Delta, Kent State University, Spring 1995
“Teaching Ethnic Literature,” Satterfield Forum, Kent State University, Fall 1994
RECENT CONFERENCE PAPERS
“When the Instructor Becomes The Text: What Should We Do?” MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States) Conference, April 2002.
“Teaching Multiethnic Literature Through the Perspective of Multilingualism,” MLA (Modern Language Association) Conference, Dec. 2001
“Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents: A Theory of Desire in African American Women’s Fiction,” American Literature Association Conference, June 2001.
“Theorizing Desire: African American Women’s Fiction and the Critique of Patriarchal Sexuality,” SSAWW (Society for American Women Writers) First National Conference, Feb. 2001.
"Finding a Voice of Desire: Alternative Aesthetic Bodies in African American Women's Fiction, 1850-1930," American Literature Association Conference, May 2000.
"Literary and Legal Violence in Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer," MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States) Conference, March 2000.
"Empire and the Mind of the Child: Sui Sin Far's 'Tales of Chinese Children,'" Modern Literature Conference on Cultural Citizenship, Oct. 1999.
"The Writer as Doctor: The Reconstruction of Medical Discourse in Gilman's Later Short Fiction," American Literature Association, May 1999.
"Home is Where the Road Is: Exile and Alienation in Japanese American Literature Written After World War II," MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States) Conference, March 1999.
"'Learnin to Speak the King's English'": Intralingual Translation in A.J. Verdelle's The Good Negress," Modern Language Association, Dec. 1998.
"Sui Sin Far in San Francisco," Modern Language Association, Dec. 1998.
“[Dis]Locating Asian American Identities: Diasporic Subjectivity in Chuang Hua’s Crossings,” Northeast Modern Language Association, April 1998.
"'I Am the Uneasy Voice of the Grass': Language and the Recovery of the Natural Landscape in Susan Power's The Grass Dancer," Modern Language Association, Dec. 1997
"Smuggling Across the Borders of Race, Gender and Sexuality: Names as Identificatory Sites in Sui Sin Far's Mrs. Spring Fragrance," Modern Language Association, Dec. 1997.
"Becoming a Desiring Subject: Alternative Aesthetic 'Bodies' in African American Women's Fiction," National Association of African American Studies, Feb. 1997.
"Translating Across the Borders: Cadences, Culture, and Compromise in Contemporary Chinese American Fiction," Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Oct. 1996.
"Voices in Dialogue about the Enigma of 'Race': The Confessions of Nat Turner, Revisited," Northeast Modern Language Association, April 1995.
COURSES TAUGHT
Graduate Seminars:
· Multiculturalism and
Multilingualism in Ethnic American Literature
· Intertextuality and
Revision in Contemporary African American Fiction
· African American
Literature and Theory
· Multi-Ethnic American
Women's Fiction, 1850-1945
· Contemporary
African American Women's Fiction
· Slavery and the Literary
Imagination
Undergraduate Courses:
· The Holocaust in Literature, Film, and Culture
GRADUATE PROGRAM ACTIVITY
Director: Three Ph.D. theses
in
progress
Co-Director: One Ph.D. thesis
(completed in 1997)
Director: One MA. thesis
(completed in 1996)
Reader: Seven Ph.D. theses; two
MA. theses
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE (selected list):
Associate Editor, Legacy,
1999-Present
Board Member, Legacies of
19th-Century U.S. Women Writers (series of scholarly texts to be
published by The University of Nebraska Press)
List Serve Moderator, Society for
the Study of American Women Writers, 1999-Present
Modern Language Association
Delegate, Great Lakes Region, 1998-2000.
Book Review Editor, Legacy,
1996-1999
Manuscript Reader, Legacy,
1994-1996
Manuscript Reader, Novel: A Forum
on Fiction, 1992
Member, MELUS (Society for
the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States), 1992-Present
Member, Northeast Modern Language
Association, 1992-1998
Member, Modern Language
Association, 1990-Present
UNIVERSITY AND DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE (selected list):
AAUP Departmental
Representative, Kent State University, 2000-2002
Member, Review and Search
Committee, Vice Provost for Diversity (Fall 2000)
Moderator, “Enhancing the Racial
and Ethnic Climate on Kent State’s Eight Campuses,” A Featured Even in
the Week of Campus Dialogue on Race, Oct. 16, 2000.
Co-Chair, Committee on Minority
Faculty Recruitment and Retention, Diversity Advisory Council, Kent
State University, 1999
Member, Diversity Advisory
Council, Kent State University, 1998-Present
Chair, Search Committee in
Post-Colonial Literature and Theory, English Department, Kent State
University,1999
Member, Women's Studies Major
Development Committee, 1998-Present
Participant, English Graduate
Faculty Study Group, "The Work of Culture," Kent State University,
1998-1999
Women's Studies Affiliate, Kent
State University, 1997-Present
Member, Women's Studies
Curriculum
Committee, Kent State University, 1997-Present
Member, Search Committee in
Feminist Theory, 1998-1999
Publicity Chair, Celebration of
Scholarship Committee, Kent State University, 1998
Member, English Department
Faculty
Advisory Committee, Kent State University, 1998-1999
Associate Faculty Member,
Interdisciplinary Seminar on "Race in America," Kent State University,
1997-1998
Appointed Peer Reviewer of
Part-Time Faculty and Graduate Students, English and Pan African
Studies Department, 1996-1999
Member, Search Committee in
American Literature/Theory, Kent State University, 1996-1997
Member, Student Grievance
Committee, Kent State University, 1996-1997
Member, English Department
Faculty
Advisory Committee, Kent State University, 1996-1997
Member, Ad Hoc Committee to
revise
Graduate Course offerings in Theory, Women's Literature, and Ethnic
Studies,
Kent State University, 1996
Advisor, Sigma Tau Delta (English
Honors Society), Kent State University, Spring 1995
Team member and Kent State
Representative, "Teaching Cultural Encounters as General Education";
American Association of Colleges and Universities Conference, 1995
Advisor, Graduate and
Undergraduate Students, 1994-2002