Laura L. Mielke

Laura L. Mielke is the Chair Dean's Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on 19th-century U.S. literature and culture, Native American and African American literatures, early American drama, and performance studies. She joined KU in 2007 and has held prestigious teaching awards, including the Frances L. Stiefel Teaching Professorship (2021–2024) and multiple Mabel S. Fry Graduate Teaching Awards.

Education: Ph.D. and M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; B.A. in English and Philosophy from Saint Olaf College.

Research interests include the intersection of literature, politics, and performance. Notable publications include Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum U.S. (2019) and Moving Encounters: Sympathy and the Indian Question in Antebellum Literature (2008). Her work explores Indigenous performances in early settler literature, antislavery rhetoric, and contemporary adaptations of 19th-century culture.

Teaching includes courses on American literature to 1865, abolitionist writing, and drama. She has edited scholarly works like Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603–1832 (2011) and contributed to the Broadview Anthology of American Literature.

Grants include a Humanities Research Fellowship (Hall Center, 2021), an American Philosophical Society Franklin Grant (2020), and multiple General Research Fund grants. Recent articles analyze Frederick Douglass’s oratory, John Brougham’s burlesque plays, and Zitkala-Ša’s gothic narratives.

Labs/Teams: Active in digital scholarship initiatives, including the Scholarly Editing journal and the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities.