Dr. Andrea Kitta is associate professor of English in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences. She received her PhD in 2009 from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland. That same year she joined the ECU faculty with responsibility for teaching and scholarship in Multicultural and Transnational Literature.
Her chair’s nominating letter concluded with the statement: “Dr. Kitta is a terrific and challenging teacher and an internationally recognized scholar. She challenges students to interrogate critically the world and human experience as mediated by folklore and belief, and she challenges them to write well and to write as folklorists. Her students respond positively to her challenge because she meets …show more content…
Kitta is not only an acclaimed researcher, whose work spans the fields of Folklore, Medicine, and English Studies, but she manages this intense productivity while winning awards for her extraordinary teaching and departmental leadership. She has played a major role in the university’s efforts to forge links between the humanities and the School of Medicine. She engages actively with scholars from other disciplines. Her specialization in the intersection of medicine, belief, and the supernatural led to the publication of her first book Vaccinations and Public Concern in History: Legend, Rumor and Rise Perception (2012), an award winning book that has attracted a remarkable amount of interdisciplinary attention and praise. Her new book, Diagnosing Folklore: Perspective on Health, Trauma, and Disability (2015) illustrates the contribution she is making to the growing field of disability studies. Her third book, the Kiss of Death: Contamination, Contagion, and Folklore will be published in 2016. She has established a writing group that has helped her colleagues to become more productive and more enthusiastic about their own research. Her impact on students’ growth as scholars is reflected in a statement from one: “Dr. Kitta’s classes have nurtured my interest in the field of folklore to the point that I have started doing my own research in the field, with the possibility of continuing my education in graduate study in folklore.” Others just enjoy her classes: “I don’t want this class to end!” wrote one. “It was so much fun! I’m considering crawling into the Folklore Archive and never coming out because I really did like this class that much!” Today Dr. Kitta will discuss teaching belief formation using a topic she has researched with her students: “A Case for Slender Man: Using the Supernatural and the Folkloresque to Teach Belief
Her chair’s nominating letter concluded with the statement: “Dr. Kitta is a terrific and challenging teacher and an internationally recognized scholar. She challenges students to interrogate critically the world and human experience as mediated by folklore and belief, and she challenges them to write well and to write as folklorists. Her students respond positively to her challenge because she meets …show more content…
Kitta is not only an acclaimed researcher, whose work spans the fields of Folklore, Medicine, and English Studies, but she manages this intense productivity while winning awards for her extraordinary teaching and departmental leadership. She has played a major role in the university’s efforts to forge links between the humanities and the School of Medicine. She engages actively with scholars from other disciplines. Her specialization in the intersection of medicine, belief, and the supernatural led to the publication of her first book Vaccinations and Public Concern in History: Legend, Rumor and Rise Perception (2012), an award winning book that has attracted a remarkable amount of interdisciplinary attention and praise. Her new book, Diagnosing Folklore: Perspective on Health, Trauma, and Disability (2015) illustrates the contribution she is making to the growing field of disability studies. Her third book, the Kiss of Death: Contamination, Contagion, and Folklore will be published in 2016. She has established a writing group that has helped her colleagues to become more productive and more enthusiastic about their own research. Her impact on students’ growth as scholars is reflected in a statement from one: “Dr. Kitta’s classes have nurtured my interest in the field of folklore to the point that I have started doing my own research in the field, with the possibility of continuing my education in graduate study in folklore.” Others just enjoy her classes: “I don’t want this class to end!” wrote one. “It was so much fun! I’m considering crawling into the Folklore Archive and never coming out because I really did like this class that much!” Today Dr. Kitta will discuss teaching belief formation using a topic she has researched with her students: “A Case for Slender Man: Using the Supernatural and the Folkloresque to Teach Belief