Dr. Teresa Reed is currently teaching Honors Literature, Advanced Composition, and History of the English Language. She also gets to teach many other classes, including freshman composition, Chaucer, Literary Criticism, and the brand-new Introduction to English Studies (EH 250), which is coming up in Spring 2021. Her specialty is Middle English literature with a strong basis in literary theory. She loves combining the two! But she also brings literary theory into nearly every class she teaches. 

Reed grew up in Livingston, Alabama, with parents who worked for what was then Livingston University and is now the University of West Alabama. They watched LU/JSU football and basketball games all the time, so JSU is an institution that she has known about pretty much her whole life. When she was hired at JSU in 1996, her parents still lived in Livingston–her mother lives there to this day–while her sister and her family are in Birmingham. In other words, JSU felt a bit like coming home. JSU’s reputation as a regional center of learning also attracted her here, especially the way the faculty in the English Department were gracious and welcoming during her first on-campus visit and at the top of their game as educators and researchers–and they continue to be so.

Around campus, she likes to participate in service opportunities such as donation drives for the Gamecock Market (formerly the Gamecock Food Pantry) and working with student organizations. Service learning has long been something that Reed has worked on in the English Department and on the University level, too. In classes using a service-learning approach, students connect with their community and with each other as they work on doing something bigger than themselves and their classrooms, and the effects of these experiences can benefit students personally and professionally long after they have earned their degrees.  On the interdisciplinary side, working with the Honors Program allows Reed to dive into different disciplines and invite faculty from across campus to speak in her classes. 

When asked about her current academic activities, she stated, “I am working on a conference presentation on Fortune in the fourth book of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. In the medieval concept, human lives are under the thrall of Fortune, her wheel, and its cyclical effects. Focusing on the first fourteen lines of the fourth book, with connections to some other key Fortune-laden passages from Troilus and Criseyde, I analyze the interplay between self-determination and control of the self by other and larger forces. Chaucer uses references to Fortune to imagine a definition of human that may be contingent upon outside forces but that, I argue, ultimately stresses one’s own perspective on the parameters of control.” This research was to be delivered at the biennial meeting of the New Chaucer Society in Durham, UK, in July 2020, but that conference was postponed due to the pandemic. Reed also continues to work on a paper analyzing the 2009 Norwegian movie Dead Snow about Nazi zombies. Reed said, “In this paper, I analyze the zombie as a terrifyingly fleshy symbol of the past and our inability to control it.” 

For a hobby, Reed likes to play video games–the Borderlands series, the Fallout series, Doom, Wolfenstein, The Last of Us are among some of her favorites. She also likes to cook and bake, finding herself trying out new recipes, especially of things that produce great leftovers and that are easy to throw in a lunchbox and take to work! And she loves cats! Ask her about her cats. She can provide pictures and videos. 

Reed is currently overseeing a donation drive for the Gamecock Market. Anyone needing more information on how to donate is encouraged to contact her.