College of Arts and Science Vanderbilt University

Vera M. Kutzinski

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Vera M. Kutzinski joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2004 as the first Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of English, a Professor of Comparative Literature, and the Director of the Center for the Americas. Prior to coming to Vanderbilt, Professor Kutzinski held appointments in English, African American Studies, and American Studies at Yale University, the faculty of which she joined in 1986. 
 
In addition to translating recent literary criticism from Germany, she is currently the director and principal editor of the Alexander von Humboldt in English (HiE) project, a collaboration between Vanderbilt and the University of Potsdam, Germany, which is working on three volumes of new English translations of Humboldt's major writings on the America in critical editions to be published by the University of Chicago Press. The first volume, the Political Essay on the Island of Cuba, is scheduled for 2010.

Academic Employment

The Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of English; Professor of Comparative Literature, Vanderbilt, 2004-present.

Professor of English, African American Studies, American Studies, Yale, 1994-2004.

Associate Professor of English, African American Studies, American Studies, Yale, 1992-94.

Visiting Associate Professor of English and New World Studies, UVA, 1991.

Assistant Professor of English, African & Afro-American Studies, and American Studies, Yale, 1986-92.

Assistant Professor of English, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, 1985-86.

Acting Instructor in American Studies and Afro‑American Studies, Yale, 1984-85.
 
 

Education

Ph.D., American Studies, Yale, 1985 (with "Distinction").

M.A., American Studies, Yale, 1982.

M.A., Afro-American Studies, Yale, 1981.

Diploma in American Studies, Smith College, 1979.

Department of English, University of Hamburg, 1975-78.

Languages: bilingual in German and English; fluent in Spanish and French; working knowledge of Portuguese.

Administrative Experience

Director, Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt, 2004-09.

University Committees:
Advisory Committee on International Affairs, Vanderbilt, 2005-07.

Hiring committee for Grants Resource Officer, CAS, Vanderbilt, 2005-06.

Morse junior faculty fellowship committee, Yale College, 2003.

Yale Summer Programs Executive Committee, 2000-01.

Director of Yale Summer Programs Search Committee, 1999-2000.

Sterling Memorial Library Search Committee, Yale, 2000-01.

Chair, Wrexham Prize Committee, Yale College, 2000.

Beinecke Library Fellowship Committee, Yale, 1999-2000.

Hilles and Griswold Funds Committee, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale, 1996-97.

Chair, Teaching Fellowship Program Review Committee, Yale Graduate School, 1995-97.

Term Appointments Committee, Yale, 1995-97.

Executive Committee, Yale Graduate School, 1995-96.

Marshall Scholarship Committee, Yale, 1992-93.

Prize Teaching Fellowship Committee, Yale, 1992-93.

Whiting Fellowship Committee, Yale, 1992-93.

Course of Study Committee, Yale College, 1991-93.

Committee on Honors and Academic Standing, Yale College, 1988-89.

President's Council on Priorities and Planning, Yale, 1986-88.

Departmental and Program Administration:
Tenure review committee, English, Vanderbilt, 2005.

Junior faculty renewal committee, English, Vanderbilt, 2004-05.

Director of Undergraduate Studies, English, Yale, 2001-04.

Undergraduate Studies Committee, English, Yale, 1995-96, 1999-2000, 2001-04.

Teaching Fellows Committee, English, Yale, 1995-96, 2000-04.

Course Director, English 115, "Introduction to Literary Study," 1992-93, 1998-2001, Yale.

Director of Undergraduate Studies, African and African-American Studies, Yale, 1992-93.

Director of Graduate Studies, African & African-American Studies, Yale, 1990-91, 1994-97.

Graduate Studies Committees: African & Afro-American Studies, English, American Studies, Yale, 1992-93, 1998-2000.

Junior Appointments Committee, English, Yale, 1991-92, 1992-93, 1998-99, 2001-04.

Ad Hoc Search Committee on Modernism, English, Yale, 1995-97, 2003.

Chair, Undergraduate Registrar Search Committee, English, Yale, 2003.

Chair, Writing Course Director Search Committee, English, Yale, 2000-01.

Search Committee for Chicano/Latino Literature, Spanish & Portuguese, Yale, 1996-97.

Senior Appointments Committee, English, Yale, 1996-97, 1999.

Chair, Ad hoc Junior Review Committee, African American Studies and History, Yale, 2000-01.

Chair, Ad hoc Junior Review Committee, American Studies, Yale, 2002-03.

Executive Committee, African-American Studies, Yale, 1994-95.

Future of the Department Committee, African-American Studies, Yale, 1999-2000.

American Studies Senior Executive Committee, Yale, 1995-96.

Aims and Procedures, English, Yale, 1995-96.

Sylvia Ardyn Boone Prize Committee, History of Art, Yale, 1995-96.

Honors and Prizes, English; African American Studies, Yale, 1992-95.

Faculty Sponsor and Convener, Yale Americanist Colloquium, 1994-2002.

Co-Director (with Sara Suleri Goodyear), The Common Wealth of Letters, Yale, 1992-96.

Women's Studies Council, Yale, 1992-93.

Council on Latin American Studies, Yale 1992-93, 2001-04.

Editorial Positions

Editorial Board Member, South Atlantic Review, 2005-08.

Contributing Editor, ALH, 2001-present.

Editorial Board Member, New World Studies Series, UP of Virginia, 1991-2008.

Associate Editor for literary criticism, Callaloo, 1988-91.

Advisory and Contributing Editor, Callaloo, 1986-97.

Conferences

"Alexander von Humboldt and the Hemisphere." Vanderbilt University, January 2009.

“What and Where is Postcolonialism?” Yale, 1992-93.

“Black Film.” Yale, 1991-92.
 
 

Awards and Fellowships

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation TransCoop Grant (for HiE).

Gerda Henkel Foundation Grant, 2008 (for Humboldt Conference).

Vanderbilt University Provost’s Research Grant, 2007 (for HiE).

A. Whitney Griswold Research Grant, Yale, 1998.

Fellow, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale, 1988-89, 1995-98.

Senior Faculty Fellowship, Yale, 1993-94.

Ford Foundation Faculty Research Grant, 1992.

John F. Enders Research Grant, Yale, 1991.

Morse Junior faculty Fellowship, Yale, 1989-90.

Mellon Fellowship, 1988-89.

Gustave Arlt Award in the Humanities (for Against the American Grain), National Council of Graduate Schools, 1987.

Theron Rockwell Field Prize, 1985 (for dissertation).

Alexander Bouchet Prize for Excellence in Afro‑American Studies, 1981.

Exchange Fellowship, American Studies Program, Smith College, 1978-79.

Invited Lectures

“Reinventing the New World: The Literary Dimensions of Humboldtian Writing.” Keynote address. Conference on Alexander von Humboldt’s Transatlantic Personae: Plotting the Imaginaries. LSU, May 5-6, 2009.

“Translations of Cuba: Fernando Ortiz, Alexander von Humboldt, and the Curious Case of John Sidney Thrasher.” LSU, March 2009.

“On Common Ground: “American Studies,” ”Latin American Studies,” and “Hemispheric American Studies.”Wissenschaftskolleg/Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, Germany. June, 2008.   

“All That English: Translation and Transculturation.” Yale, November 2007.

“Translation and TransArea Studies.” University of Oregon, May, 2007.

“Not Business as Usual: Interdisciplinarity, the Humanities, and the Work of the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt.” Notre Dame, October, 2005.

“Imagining New World Communities” and Masterclass on New World Studies. University of Kentucky, October, 2005. 

“Caribbean Literary History and its Sexual Others.” Caribbean Encounters Symposium, Université Charles-de-Gaulle—Lille III and K.U. Leuven, Campus Kortrijk, Netherlands, May 2005.

“Cuba Libre: Langston Hughes Translates Nicolás Guillén.” Conference on Cuba: One Hundred Years of Independence, A Century of Literature. Whitney Humanities Center, Yale, 2002.

“Feminism, Queerness, and Caribbean Literature.” Lund University, Sweden, 2001.

“Wilson Harris’s Phantom Bodies.” Plenary Lecture. Conference on “Wilson Harris and Caribbean Literature,” University of Liege, Belgium, 2001.

“Faulkner and the Caribbean.” MSA Plenary Lecture, Houston, TX, 2001.

“Bodies and Borders: America, the United States, and the Caribbean.” Plenary Lecture. “Borders of the Americas: Rethinking ‘Our’ Modernities” Conference, Center for the Americas, SUNY Buffalo, 2000.

“Feminism, Queerness, and Caribbean Literature.” Plenary lecture. Macalester International Roundtable: International Feminisms, 2000.

“Unsettling False Clarities: Wilson Harris, Postcoloniality, and the Logic of Reversibility.” University of Pennsylvania, 1998.

“Unsettling False Clarities: Wilson Harris’s “Carnival Trilogy.” Princeton University, 1997.

“Narrative/Seduction: Wilson Harris’s Carnival Trilogy.” Wesleyan University, 1997.

“Advertising Color: Sexuality and Race and 19th Century Cuba.” University of Maryland, College Park, 1996.

“Performances of Masculinity: Miguel Barnet’s Biografía de un cimarrón,” Conference on Race and Sexuality in the Americas, Johns Hopkins University, 1996.

"Sugar's Secrets: Race and Gender in Cuban Literature." Johns Hopkins University, 1993.

"Cuban Color: Mestizaje and the Problem of Race in Cuban Discourse." Conference on "Decoding Colour," Warwick University, Coventry, England, 1993.

"Dressed As Women: The Poetics of Mestizaje."  New York University, 1993.

"The Trouble with Literacy: Reading African-American Slave Narratives as Literature." Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, Connecticut, 1993.

"Shakespeare in Cuba: The Tempest Once Again," Conference on "Cultural Encounters and Identity." University of Odense, Denmark, 1991.

"Unseasonal Flowers: Plácido and Jean Toomer." Harvard, 1990; University of Virginia, 1989.

"(Literary) History and the Problem of Synthesis." Center for English and North American Studies, University of Frankfurt, Germany, 1988.

Select Conference Talks

“Translating Humboldt: The Political Essay on the Island of Cuba.” Conference on “Alexander von Humboldt and the Hemisphere: A Working Conference for Humboldt Studies,” Vanderbilt University Center for the Americas, January 2009.

“Langston Hughes and Hemispheric Modernisms.” Panel on Transnational Modernisms in the Americas. MSA, Nashville, TN, November 2008.

“The Politics of Identity in the Caribbean and Latin America,” Roundtable participant. MSA, Nashville, TN, November 2008.

“Caribbean Modernisms,” co-leader with Jared Stark, MSA Seminar, MSA, Nashville, TN, November 2008.

“Transnationalism and Translation: Alexander von Humboldt”’s Cuba Essay. MLA Convention, Chicago, December 2007.

“Should American Studies become Studies of the Americas?” ASA, Oakland, CA October 2006. “Langston Hughes and Nicolás Guillén.” LASA, Montreal, 2006.

(with Caroline Levander, Rice University). “The Place of Centers in U.S. Humanistic Research.” The Third International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities. University of Cambridge, New Hall, August 2005.

“Translating Cuba: Langston Hughes and Nicolás Guillén Revisited.” MSA, Madison, WI, 2002.

“Nation, Migration, and Caribbean Literary Studies.” Conference on Negotiating National Belonging: A Cross-Continental Dialogue on Displacement, Reincorporation, and the Nation-State. Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1997.

“The Cult of Caliban: Narrative Authority and Resistance in Caribbean Literature." International Comparative Literature Association Convention, Edmonton, Canada, 1994.

"Multiculturalism in Caribbean Discourse: Toward a Critique of Mestizaje." American Studies Association Convention, Costa Mesa, CA., 1992.

"Multiculturalism and Afro-American Studies." Annual Convention of the German American Studies Association, Berlin, Germany, 1992.

“Turbulence and Noise: Translating Nicolás Guillén's El diario," Translating Latin America Conference, SUNY Binghamton, 1990.

"Ritual and Poetic Voice in the Poetry of Jay Wright," MLA, Chicago, 1985.

"The Logic of Wings: Gabriel García Márquez and Afro‑American Literature," MLA, Washington, D.C., 1984.