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Theresa Kulbaga
Professor
English

Theresa Kulbaga

Contact Info

513-785-3034
228 Rentschler Hall
Hamilton Campus

Biography

Theresa A. Kulbaga is Professor of English and gender studies at Miami University and a Teaching Artist at WordPlay Cincy. Her essays on women’s autobiography and memoir, transnational feminism, and radical pedagogy appear in Prose Studies, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, JAC, College English, a/b: auto/biography studies, and English Journal, among others. She spends her time engaging in sustained critique of institutions, thinking about evidence-based hope, gardening for wildlife, and hiking her puppy.

Education

  • PhD, The Ohio State University, 2006
  • MA, The Ohio State University, 2000

Research and Teaching Interests

  • Autobiography, Biography, and Life Writing
  • Multi-Ethnic U.S. Literatures and Cultures
  • U.S. Literature After 1945
  • Creative Nonfiction Writing
  • Feminist and Queer Theory
  • Transnational Feminism and Human Rights Rhetorics
  • Documentary Film
  • Critical, Feminist, and Queer Pedagogies

Selected Publications

  • Campuses of Consent: Sexual and Social Justice in Higher Education (with Leland G. Spencer). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019.
    (Winner of the 2020 Outstanding Book Award from the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender.)
  • “Necessary Context: In the Dream House and the Politics of Citation.” Forthcoming in Empathy and the Other: Difference, Connection, and the Teaching of Writing, ed. Lisa Blankenship and Eric Leake. (Currently in negotiations with a university press. Estimated publication: 2025.)
  • “Injury Epistemology: Notes on a Silencing and Narrative Accompaniment” (with Leland G. Spencer). a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, January 2024.
  • “Outrage Epistemology: Affective Access as a Way of Knowing in Feminist Scholarship” (with Leland G. Spencer). Women’s Studies in Communication, July 2021, 1-19. (Winner of the NCA Feminism & Gender Studies Division Top Paper Award of 2021)
  • “Consent Education as Active Allyship: A Call for Centering Trans and Queer Experiences.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, vol. 8 no. 2, 2021, p. 97-103.
  • “#YoungBlackLivesMatter: Word Consciousness, Social Justice, and Agency Outside of School” (with Susan Watts-Taffe, Amy Bottomley, and Khahlia Sanders). English Journal 2 (2020): 46–54.
  • “Immigration and Asian American Autobiographical Writing: An Unstraightforward Story.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Oxford University Press, 2019.
  • “Fitness and the Feminist First Lady: Gender, Race, and Body in Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign” (with Leland G. Spencer). Women & Language 1 (2017/2018). 36-50.
  • “Trigger Warnings as Respect for Student Boundaries in University Classrooms” (with Leland G. Spencer). Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy 1 (2018): 106-122.
  • “Imperial Partitioning in the Neoliberal University” (with Cathy Wagner and Jennifer Cohen). World Social and Economic Review 8 (April 2017): 61-78.
  • "Sari suasion: migrant economies of care in Shailja Patel’s Migritude." Prose Studies 38.1 (2016): 74-92.
  • “Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age.” Journal of Asian American Studies 19.1 (Feb. 2016), 127-130.
  • “Call and Response.” College English 71.5 (May 2009): 539-541.
  • “Pleasurable Pedagogies: Reading Lolita in Tehran and the Rhetoric of Empathy.” College English 70.5 (May 2008): 506-521.
  • “Labored Realisms: Geopolitical Rhetoric and Asian American and Asian (Im)migrant Women’s Auto/biography” with Wendy S. Hesford. JAC 32.1 (2003): 77-107. (Winner of the 2003 Elizabeth Flynn Award for Best Feminist Essay published in JAC: Quarterly Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Rhetoric, Culture, Literacy, and Politics)  

Awards and Honors

  • 2020 Outstanding Book Award. Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender (OSCLG).
  • 2018-2019 John W. Altman Fellow.
  • 2018 Center for Teaching & Learning Small Grant. $500 to fund research and travel related to gender studies and teaching.
  • 2018 Excellence in Online Teaching Award Nomination. Nominated by my students.
  • 2014 E. Phillips Knox Distinguished Teaching Award Nomination. Nominated by my department chair.
  • Miami Hamilton Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2010.
  • First Vice President, Women’s Caucus for the Modern Languages (WCML), 2010.
  • Kenyon College Teaching Initiative Grant, 2009.

Work in Progress

Kulbaga is currently completing research on the #MeToo movement and women’s personal storytelling; women's creative nonfiction and the gender data gap (the persistent lack of data about women in medicine, technology, and product design); women, whales, and the wonders of nature writing; and empathy in the writing classroom.