Laura Dubek earned her doctorate at the University of Iowa in 2001, with a specialization in African American literature. In 2002, she joined the faculty in the English department. She teaches courses for several programs, including African American and Africana studies, English, General Education, Graduate Studies, and Honors. For three years, she taught for the Great Books in Tennessee Prisons program. A strong proponent of professional development, Dubek regularly attends workshops to improve her teaching, which now includes developing online and special topics courses as well as sponsoring students’ participation in the university-wide research poster exhibition on Scholars Day. In 2014, she received the College of Liberal Arts Faculty Award for Student Success.

From 2009-2014, Dubek served as director of Lower Division English. She initiated a course redesign of English 1010: Literacy for Life, and in 2015, she received a Course Revitalization Grant from the Tennessee Board of Regents to collaborate on a redesign of English 1020: Research and Argumentative Writing. From 2009-2015, she served two consecutive terms as the English department representative on the Faculty Senate She will begin a third term in 2021.  

Dubek’s literary criticism has appeared in African American Review, College Literature, Humanities, Journal of American Culture, Journal of Popular Film and Television, MELUS, Mississippi Quarterly, Southern Literary Journal, Southern Quarterly, and Women's Studies. She has contributed chapters to books focused on Prison Writing (2014), Frederick Douglass (2020), Alice Walker's The Color Purple (2022), Slavery in Black Film/TV (2024), two recent films (Clemency and Till) by Nigerian-American Chinonye Chukwu (2024), and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (2025). In recent years, both her teaching and her scholarship has focused more on Black popular culture and has included collaborative research with graduate students. Dubek is the editor of Living Legacies: Literary Responses to the Civil Rights Movement (2018), a collection of interdisciplinary essays, and co-editor of Children, Too, Sing America, a special issue of College Literature (2022). She received the College of Liberal Arts Faculty Award for Research and Creative Activity in 2018.

https://www.routledge.com/Living-Legacies-Literary-Responses-to-the-Civil-Rights-Movement/Dubek/p/book/9781138094000.

« Read Less

College of Liberal Arts Faculty Research Award 2017-18

General Education English Professional Development Grant, MTSU, 2017

EXL Faculty Grant, 2017

Faculty Research & Creative Activity Grant, MTSU, Summer/Fall 2017

EXL Faculty Grant, 2015

Lower Division English Professional Development Grant, 2015

Tennessee Board of Regents Course Revitalization Grant, with Julie Barger, 2015

Practices in Student Success Faculty Award, College of Liberal Arts, MTSU, 2014

Identified as a person who significantly contributed to student success in 2008/09/11/12/13/14/16/18/23/24

Faculty Research & Creative Activity Grant, MTSU, Spring/Summer 2012

Faculty Development Grant, MTSU, 2012

Faculty Development Grant, MTSU, 2010

Faculty Research & Creative Activity Grant, MTSU, Spring/Summer 2004

Faculty Development Grant, MTSU, 2004

Frederick Seeley Dissertation Fellow for Teaching & Research, U of Iowa, 1999-2000

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, University of Iowa Council on Teaching, 1998

John Gerber Teaching Award, English Department, University of Iowa, 1997

Presidential Graduate Fellow, University of Nebraska, 1991-1992

Ralph Wardle Scholarship, University of Nebraska-Omaha, 1992

« Read Less

Books  

Living Legacies: Literary Responses to the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Routledge, 2018.  

Chapters in Books   

"'Liberation Over Assimilation': Black-Authored Film/Television & Slavery, 2013-2021." African American Literature in Transition. Vol. 17. Ed. Maria Bellamy. Cambridge University Press, (forthcoming).

"Writing Black Women's Grief and Activism in Film." The Oxford Handbook to Black Women's Writing. Ed. Simone Drake. Oxford University Press, (forthcoming).

"Rewriting 'The Ugly Duckling': The Bluest Eye and Civil Disorder(s) in the 1960s." Critical Insights: The Bluest Eye. Ed. Jericho Williams. Salem Press, (forthcoming).

"How Sweet the Sound: Celie's Survival Story as Broadway Musical." Critical Insights: The Color Purple. Ed. Jericho Williams. Salem Press, 2022. 207-222.

"Black Writers Matter: Frederick Douglass in the Literary Present." Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass. Ed. Jericho Williams. Salem, 2020. 219-234.

“[D]e understandin’ to go ‘long wid it’: Storytelling and (the) Civil Rights Movement.” Introduction. Living Legacies: Literary Responses to the Civil Rights Movement. Ed. Dubek. New York: Routledge, 2018. 1-16.

“Back to Birmingham: Three Poets Remember the Sixteenth Street Church Bombing.” With StarShield Lortie. In Living Legacies: Literary Responses to the Civil Rights Movement.   Ed. Dubek. New York: Routledge, 2018. 69-79. 

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the African American Quest for Freedom and Literacy.” In Prison Narratives from Boethius to Zana. Ed. Philip Edward Phillips. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014. 195-214.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles  

"Strong Enough to Fight: Harriet Tubman & The Myth of the Lost Cause." Humanities 12.4 (2023). https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/12/4/67

"'Restorying' the Past: Toni Morrison's Remember, a Black-and-White Primer for American Children." College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies. Special Issue Theme: Toni Morrison and Adaptation. 47.4 (Fall 2020): 840-867. (Nominated for The David D. Anderson Award for Outstanding Essay in Midwestern Literary Studies)

“‘Fight for It!’: The Twenty-First-Century Underground Railroad.” The Journal of American Culture. Special Issue Theme: Slavery in the Contemporary Imagination 41.1 (March  2018): 68-80.

“Deeds Not Words: The Battle Cry of Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna.” With Jesse Williams, Jr. The Journal of Popular Film and Television 43.2 (2015): 83-91.

“‘Pass it On!’: Legacy and the Freedom Struggle in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.” Southern Quarterly 52.2 (Winter 2015): 90-109. Rpt. in Living Legacies: Literary Responses to the Civil Rights Movement. Ed. Dubek. New York: Routledge, 2018. 80-93.

“‘Till Death Do Us Part: White Male Rage in Richard Wright’s Savage Holiday.” Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures. Special Issue on Richard Wright 61.4 (Fall 2008): 1-21.

“‘[J]us’ listenin’ tuh you’: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and the Gospel Impulse.” Southern Literary Journal 41 (Fall 2008): 109-130. 

“White Family Values in Ann Petry’s Country Place.” MELUS 29.2 (Summer 2004): 55-76.

“Lessons in Solidarity: Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Bâ on Female Victim(izer)s.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 30 (2001): 199-223.

“The Social Geography of Race in Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee.” African American Review 30.3 (1996): 341-51.

“Rewriting Male Scripts: Willa Cather and The Song of the Lark.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 23 (1994): 293-306.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Encyclopedia Entries  

“Janie Crawford,” “Jody Starks,” and “Verigible (Tea Cake) Woods” in A Student’s Guide to American Literary Characters. Columbia, South Carolina: Manley, 2007.

Conference Presentations (most recent)

“Hamilton: An American Musical and the Douglass, King, Miranda Mix-Tape” With Micah Hallman. PCAS. October 4-6, 2018.

“White History Week: James Baldwin’s Modest Proposal and the Liberation of Atticus Finch.” PCA/ACA. Seattle. March 23-26, 2016.

“The Scandal of American Democracy: Zora Neale Hurston’s Call and TV Writer Shonda Rhimes’s Response.” Faulkner & Hurston. Southeast Missouri State. Oct. 23-25, 2014.  

Under Review/In Process

"Children's Literature." Toni Morrison: In Context. Ed. Stephanie Li. Oxford University Press, 2026.

« Read Less

English 1010 Expository Writing: Literacy for Life (Dual Enrollment & EXL)

English 1020 Research & Argumentative Writing (online & EXL)

English 2020 African American Nonfiction (online)

English 2030 The Experience of Literature

English 3000 Introduction to Literary Studies (online and f2f)

English 3320 Twentieth Century American Literature (online)

English 3330 Southern Literature (online)

English 3340 African American Literature (online)

English 3735 Black Women Writers

English 6221/7221 Graduate Seminar in African American Writers

English 6201/7201 Directed Readings 

« Read Less