Emily Lutenski arrived at Appalachian State University in 2023, when she took on the role as Director of the GWS program and Professor in IDS. Her research and teaching interests include the co-constitution of gender, race, and sexuality in 20th- and 21st-century U.S. cultures, especially in U.S. literary histories; antiracist feminist methodologies; and feminist and queer theories, particularly as they interface with ethnic studies.
Emily came to Appalachian after working in the Department of American Studies at Saint Louis University for more than a decade. She has also taught at Princeton University in African American Studies, Bowling Green State University in Ethnic Studies, and the University of Michigan in both Women’s Studies and English. She has a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies and English from the University of Michigan, an M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in English and Women’s Studies from the University of California at Berkeley.
Emily has published work on race, gender, and other categories of analysis in journals such as MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Studies in American Indian Literatures, Western American Literature, and American Studies, as well as in edited collections. Her first book, West of Harlem: African American Writers in the Borderlands (University Press of Kansas, 2015), examines how writers traditionally associated with the Harlem Renaissance—including women, queer, and proletarian writers—engaged with the U.S.-México borderlands, a space that was often thought to be “tricultural” (Native American, Anglo, and Mexican American), but not inclusive of Black people, and a space that feminists have theorized as transgressive in terms of gender and sexuality in addition to race and nation. West of Harlem was a finalist for the David J. Weber Prize for Best Nonfiction Book on Southwestern America, awarded by the Western History Assocation and the Clements Center for Southwest Studies.
She is currently working on her next book, titled Two Americans: Margery Latimer, Jean Toomer, and the Cultural Politics of Interracial Intimacy. Two Americans investigates the miscegenation scandal that beset two writers—Margery Latimer, a white feminist modernist, and Jean Toomer, traditionally associated with the “New Negro” movement—and uses this narrative throughline to bolster an argument about the role of interracial intimacy in the construction of U.S. literary histories. This work has been supported by a fellowship at the National Humanities Center.
Emily routinely teaches courses in U.S. feminist thought and the politics of race, feminist theory, and queer theory. She loves teaching the GWS introductory course, “Sex, Gender, and Power,” and has joyfully taken on “Girls Coming of Age” through a cultural studies lens. As GWS director, she places special emphasis on one-on-one mentoring with App State students--constructing (and sometimes reconstructing) degree plans, choosing classes, weighing graduate or professional school options, networking for internships and jobs, and applying to conferences, grants, and fellowships.
When she’s not working, Emily can probably be found walking her adorable dog, Skipper.
Title: Professor, Director of Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies
Department: Department of Interdisciplinary Studies
Email address: Email me