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Katie Frye Faculty Profile

Katie Frye

Associate Professor of English
Humanities/Teacher Education Division, Seaver College
CAC 312
310.506.4135

Biography

Katie Frye is associate professor of English at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She received her PhD in twentieth-century American literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She completed her undergraduate studies with a degree in English at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. She teaches literature and composition courses in the Humanities and Teacher Education Division. Her research interests include Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Eudora Welty.

Education

  • PhD English, University of California at Santa Barbara
  • MA English, University of California at Santa Barbara
  • BA English, Lipscomb University

 

  • “‘That’s me’: Ruby Fisher from ‘A Piece of News’ as Eudora Welty’s Selfie.” Eudora Welty Review, vol. 15, spring 2023, pp. 41-58.

  • “The Frame Story in Kate Chopin’s ‘A Lady of Bayou St. John’ and ‘La Belle Zoraide,’” published in Studies in the American Short Story, vol. 3, no. 1–2 (2022). 

  • “Reading Welty’s ‘Old Mr. Marblehall’ and ‘Petrified Man’ as Southern Pulp.” Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden in Plain Sight, edited by Harriet Pollack and Jacob Agner, UP of Mississippi, December 2022, pp. 51-68. 

  • “Reading Partus Sequitur Ventrem in Flannery O’Connor,” published in Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, January/ February 2021.
  • 'A silver bullet ready to drop into her brain': The Crisis of White Motherhood in Flannery O'Connor's 'Greenleaf,' 'The Enduring Chill,' and 'Everything That Rises Must Converge," published in Mississippi Quarterly, Spring 2017/2018.
  • "The Case against Whiteness in William Wells Brown's Clotel," published in Mississippi Quarterly, Summer-Fall 2009.
  • "Edna Pontellier, Adèle Ratignolle, and the Unnamed Nurse: a Triptych of Maternity in The Awakening," published in Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South, Fall/Winter 2006. 
  • Howard A. White Teaching Award, Pepperdine University, fall 2023
  • Brett J. Love Award for Teaching Excellence, Pepperdine University
  • Pearl Butler Evans Award in Graduate Writing
  • UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Pre-doctoral Fellowship
  • UCSB Affiliates Graduate Dissertation Fellowship
  • “‘None but those which were true’: Storytelling and Property Laws in Kate Chopin’s Short Fiction,” American Literature Association Symposium: “The Historical Imagination in American Literature.” Santa Fe, NM, October 2022. 
  • “‘That’s me’: Eudora Welty and the Performative Self,” American Literature Association Conference. Chicago, IL, May 2022.

  • “Teaching the Frame Story in Kate Chopin’s ‘A Lady of Bayou St. John’ and ‘La Belle Zoraide,’” American Literature Association Conference. Chicago, IL, May 2022.

  • “Pulp Fiction: Reading Magazine Culture in Eudora Welty.” American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA, July 2021. 
  • “Reading Partus Sequitur Ventrem in Selected Short Fiction by Flannery O’Connor.” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference. San Diego, CA, November 2019.
  • “Turning to Stone: Reading ‘Old Mr. Marblehall’ and ‘Petrified Man’ as Meditations on White Anxiety in the Jim Crow South.” Eudora Welty Society Conference. Charleston, SC, February 2019.
  • “A Professorial Performance: The Death of New Criticism and the Birth of Edu-tainment.” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference. Bellingham, WA, November 2018.
  • "Nature-Deficit Disorder and Pixar's WALL-E." Christian Scholars' Conference. Nashville, TN, June 2018.
  • "'A silver bullet ready to drop into her brain': The Crisis of White Motherhood in Flannery O'Connor's 'Greenleaf,' 'The Enduring Chill,' and 'Everything That Rises Must Converge,'" Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference. Pasadena, CA, November 2016.
  • "'Just a shape to fill a lack': William Faulkner's Addie Bundren and the [De]Face[ment] of White Trash Motherhood." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference. Portland, OR, November 2015.
  • "Maternity in Kate Chopin's The Awakening: The Identity Politics of the Grotesque." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference. Riverside, CA, November 2014.
  • Faculty Research Retreat Grant, Office of the Vice Provost, Pepperdine University, May 2024
  • Dean’s Research Grant, Pepperdine University, spring 2022 and spring 2023
  • Pandemic Research Recovery Grant, Pepperdine University, spring 2022
  • Seaver Gender-Academic Year Undergraduate Research Initiative, Pepperdine University, 2021
  • Summer Undergraduate Research Program, Pepperdine University, summer 2021 and 2023
  • Seaver Research Council Grant, Spring 2020
     

Topics

  • American Literature from 1865
  • Narrative representations of motherhood
  • Writers of the Southern Renaissance
  • U.S. race and ethnicity studies
  • Women's Studies
  • The authors Kate Chopin, Flannery O’Connor, and Eudora Welty

Courses

  • ENG 201: English Studies 
  • ENG 330: American Literature 
  • ENG 380: Readings in Eudora Welty
  • ENG 440: Multicultural American Literature
  • ENG 470: Western Literature in Translation
  • HUM 313: Stories about the Human Heart in the Modern Age