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Tracey Watts

Interim Chairperson and Instructor

Education

Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin

M.A., University of Montana

Departments

  • College of Arts and Sciences
  • English

Bio

Tracey Watts completed her M.A. at the University of Montana in Missoula and her Ph.D. in Ethnic and Third World Literatures at the University of Texas at Austin. She regularly teaches composition to first-year writers at Loyola, and she recently collaborated with colleagues in the field to create an OER rhetoric and composition textbook. She is currently piloting an internship program for English majors, and she is also currently active in developing study abroad courses in the Czech Republic and in Iceland. Both programs are informed by her graduate level work in postcolonial literary studies. She won the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching in 2021.

Classes Taught

  • Critical Reading and Writing
  • Writing from Sources
  • Deconstructing Superheroes
  • Alchemy of Books (bookbinding and experimental fiction)
  • Reading Prague

Areas of Expertise

  • New Orleans literature
  • Multi-ethnic U.S. Literature
  • Postcolonial Literature

Publications

  • Rhetoric Matters: A Guide to Success in First-Year Writing Classes. Open Educational Resource (OER) co-authored and edited with Adam Falik, Doreen Piano, Johannah White, and Dorie Larue. Prepared in partnership with a grant from LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network. 2022.
  • "Haunted Memories: Disruptive Ghosts in the Poems of Brenda Marie Osbey." In Summoning Our Saints: The Poetry and Prose of Brenda Marie Osbey, ed. John Lowe. Lexington Books, 2019.
  • "Scavengers." Fourteen Hills 21.1 (2015) 66-69.
  • "Haunted Memories: Disruptive Ghosts in the Poems of Brenda Marie Osbey and Joy Harjo." Southern Literary Journal. 46 (2014) 108-128.
  • "The Problems of Perspective in Mongo Beti's The Poor Christ of Bomba." Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society. 39 (2011) 377-98.