معرفی
Jodie Childers serves as an Assistant Professor in the General Faculty at the University of Virginia, where her work bridges academic scholarship, creative writing, and documentary filmmaking to examine transnational American political and cultural narratives.
Her educational foundation includes a PhD in English with a concentration in American studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, complemented by an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College and an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Childers' research interrogates 20th-century transnational American studies through Icelandic literature, cultural McCarthyism, and Cold War political rhetoric, with a distinctive focus on the psychic and environmental consequences of extractivism and deindustrialization in Rust Belt Appalachia. Her methodology integrates literary analysis with autoethnographic and documentary approaches to explore community resilience.
Her recent publications and film projects reveal consistent thematic threads: political dissent during the Red Scare, transnational authorship (particularly Halldór Laxness), environmental justice, and the role of folk music in social movements, often centered on Rust Belt and Hudson River regions.
Her scholarly and creative contributions have earned significant recognition:
- Course Enrichment Grant, University of Virginia Library (2025)
- Alternative Assignments, Faculty Learning Community Grant, University of Virginia (2025)
- Tennessee Williams Festival Fiction Contest Finalist (2024)
- Vassar College Archives & Special Collections Research Grant (2024)
- Digital Humanities Summer Institute Scholarship (2024)
- NEH Summer Seminar Grant, Rust Belt Humanities Lab (2023)
- Slippery Elm Poetry Contest Finalist (2022)
- Terry J. Cox Award for Poetry Longlist (2021)
- Leifur Eiríksson Foundation Fellowship (2019)
Dr. Childers actively secures research funding while mentoring through creative projects; her documentary Down by the Riverside (2023) exemplifies her integration of academic inquiry with community engagement, examining Pete Seeger's environmental activism. She is developing innovative pedagogical approaches including AI integration in writing classrooms.
She collaborates with the Rust Belt Humanities Lab and participates in digital humanities initiatives, with forthcoming presentations exploring documentary storytelling and political rhetoric at major conferences through 2026.
