Rebecca Weaver-Hightower

Rebecca Weaver-Hightower is a Professor in the Department of English within the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech. She joined the university in July 2020 after holding a leadership position at North Dakota State University.

She earned her PhD in English literature from the University of Kentucky. Her educational background provides the foundation for her interdisciplinary research spanning literary and cultural studies.

Dr. Weaver-Hightower specializes in postcolonial studies and settler narratives, with significant contributions to film studies and colonial literature. Her research examines representations of settler colonialism across cinematic and literary media, exploring intersections of empire, race, and cultural memory. Key publications include the authored works Frontier Fictions: Settler Sagas and Postcolonial Guilt and Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals and Fantasies, alongside the coauthored Cinematic Settlers: The Settler Colonial World in Film. She has also coedited critical volumes such as Archiving Settler Colonialism: Culture, Space and Race and Postcolonial Film: History, Empire, Resistance.

Her scholarly impact extends to public discourse, including media commentary on educational issues such as distance learning challenges during the 2020 pandemic period as cited in the Grand Forks Herald. While her publications demonstrate significant influence in postcolonial theory, the available documentation does not specify current advisees, grant funding, or laboratory affiliations.