Ph.D., Michigan State University; English
Visiting Assistant Professor

Professor Scott’s doctoral study focused on American Literature through the 20th century with an emphasis on African American literature.   Dr. Scott is the author of James Baldwin’s Later Fiction: Witness to the Journey (Michigan State University Press, 2002) which examines the politics of James Baldwin’s reception after 1965 and provides new readings of his last three novels.  Her article, “James Baldwin and the Civil Rights Movement,” commissioned for A Historical Guide to James Baldwin (Oxford University Press) will come out in 2009.  She is also co-editor of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison:  Comparative Critical and Theoretical Essays (Palgrave, 2006) and the author of an article in that volume entitled, ““Revising the Incest Story:  Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and James Baldwin's Just Above My Head.”  In addition to essays on Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, Professor Scott has published essays on Ishmael Reed, Tillie Olsen and Detroit’s Broadside Press.   Before teaching in James Madison College, Dr. Scott taught in the department of Writing Rhetoric and American Cultures at M.S.U.  Her courses there included:  Writing: Women in America and Writing:  Public Life in America (a service learning course).   Professor Scott began teaching in James Madison in 2004 and has taught in the Humanities, Culture and Writing program as well as in the Introduction to Public Affairs.  Her MC 112 course, “Movements of Social Change in the United States, 1955-1972,” explores the Civil Rights Movement, student activism (both left and right) and the Women’s Movement at mid-century.