USC.edu

Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus

Associate Professor of English
Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus
Pronouns She / Her / Hers Email rauterku@usc.edu Office THH 439 Office Phone (213) 740-2808

Research & Practice Areas

African American Literature and African American Studies

Biography

I’m a Southern California native, born and raised in Duarte and Monrovia. I teach and write about African American literature and culture.

I’m currently working on a new book titled “Fly Girl in the Academy,” a collection of essays in which I reflect upon my experiences in higher education as a Black, female, first-generation college student turned faculty member and how these experiences inform my approach to literary studies. Situating these reflections within a broader conversation about the future of the English major, I argue that we need...

Education

  • Ph.D. English, Northwestern University, 2012
  • M.A. English, Northwestern University, 2006
  • M.A. English, Claremont Graduate University, 2005
  • B.A. English, University of La Verne, 2003

  • Tenure Track Appointments

    • Assistant Professor of English, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2013 – 2017

  • Research Keywords

    African American Literature and African American Studies

    Research Specialties

    African American Literature and African American Studies

    • (Fall 2023) ENGL 446. Afro-American Poetry and Drama, TTh, 12:30pm – 01:50pm
    • (Spring 2024) ENGL 491. Senior Seminar in Literary Studies, Th, 02:00pm – 04:20pm, THH111
    • (Spring 2024) GESM 120. Seminar in Humanistic Inquiry – Crime and Punishment in LA, TTh, 12:30pm – 01:50pm, KAP166
    • (Spring 2025) ENGL 441. American Literature, 1865 to 1920, MW, 02:00pm – 03:20pm
    • (Spring 2025) ENGL 447. African-American Narrative, MW, 10:00am – 11:20am

  • Book

    • Daniels-Rauterkus, M. (2020). Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race: Rethinking Blackness in the African American Novel. Baton Rouge: LSU Press. URL

    Book Chapters

    • Daniels-Rauterkus, M. (2024). “The New Jack Renaissance: Black Literary and Cultural Production and the Institutionalization of African American Literary Studies”. African American Literature in Transition, 1990-2000 Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP.
    • Daniels-Rauterkus, M. (2022). “Andrea Lee’s Europe: Race, Interracial Desire, and Transnationalism”. The Oxford Handbook of 20th-Century American Lit pp. 281-298. New York: Oxford UP. URL

    Journal Article

    • Daniels, M. (2013). The Limits of Literary Realism: Of One Blood’s Post-Racial Fantasy”. Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters. Vol. 36 (1), pp. 158-177.
    • Daniels, M., Laski, G., Bradley, A., Ernest, J., Diggs Colbert, S., Castronovo, R., Holland, S. P., Warren, K. W. (2011). “Assessing What Was African American Literature?; or The State of the Field in the New Millennium”. African American Review. Vol. 44 (4), pp. 567-591.
    • SAMLA Studies Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Monograph, 2021-2022
    • Honorable Mention, MLA William Sanders Scarborough Prize, 2020-2021

  • Other Service to the University

    • Dornsife Faculty Council, 2019 – 2021
    • Academic Senate, 2019-2020
USC Dornsife faculty and staff may update profiles via MyDornsife.