Research
Grants (Selected)
“Democratizing the Humanities.” Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Race and Racialization in the United States Grant (PI)
Society for the Study of American Women Writers Digital Recovery Hub. NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grants Level I, II (Co-I)
Movable: Narratives of Recovery and Place, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) State Opioid Response Grant (PI, Co-I [multiple rounds])
Building an Intercollegiate Digital Humanities Program, Hedrick Program Grant for Teaching Innovation, Marshall University (PI)
Digitizing and Teaching Appalachia’s Past, West Virginia Humanities Council Minigrant (PI)
Improving STEM Students’ Writing, Hedrick Program Grant for Teaching Innovation, Marshall University (PI)
Books
Lillvis, Kristen. Posthuman Blackness and the Black Female Imagination. U of Georgia P, 2017. (Republished in paperback, 2019)
Posthuman Blackness and the Black Female Imagination examines the future-oriented visions of black subjectivity in works by contemporary black women writers, filmmakers, and musicians, including Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Julie Dash, and Janelle Monáe.
Reviews:
"Ambitiously covering literary, musical, and visual narratives, this text productively periodizes contemporary black women's writing and demonstrates continuities between past-facing and future-oriented narratives. Lillvis's text is a welcome addition to the creative, critical, and theoretical work surrounding the current moment in black literatures." James Arnett, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, vol. 38, no. 1, Spring 2019.
"Lillvis makes space for new readings of the speculative fictions of writers such as Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler. [. . .] These are amongst the most compelling and novel readings of texts that have already received much scholarly attention." Jessie LaFrance Dunbar, Studies in American Culture, vol. 41, no. 1, Oct. 2018.
Lillvis, Kristen, Robert Miltner, and Molly Fuller, editors. Community Boundaries and Border Crossings: Critical Essays on Ethnic Women Writers. Lexington, 2016. Transforming Literary Studies.
Through the interconnected themes of community boundaries and border crossings, this collection explores issues of diaspora, trans-nationality, cultural hybridity, home, and identity that are central to ethnic women writers.
Digital Projects
Digital platform for people in Appalachia and beyond to share, highlight, and document stories of recovery.
60+ published recovery texts
$200k+ in grant funding
30+ paid student, faculty, staff, and community collaborators
Featured in The Opioid Epidemic and US Culture: Expression, Art, and Politics in an Age of Addiction (Travis D. Stimeling, West Virginia UP, 2020).
Hub that supports projects recovering the work of women writers and fosters collaboration, mentorship, and community-building among women working in the digital humanities while seeking feminist and decolonial approaches to the creation, curation, design, sharing, and archiving of digital content.
Focus on Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and LGBTQI+ stories, texts, experiences, and voices
$50k NEH Digital Advancement Grant
Project team of nationally recognized DH scholars
Twine game exploring glitches in terms of technology, digital humanities, gender, identity, and the body.
Selected for 2021 International Digital Media and Arts Association (iDMAa) exhibition “Glitch Is the Soul in the Machine.”
Exhibitions
Winona State University, Winona, MN, 24-27 June 2021.
Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN, 20 Sept.-1 Oct. 2021.
Pedagogical website bringing free and open-access digitized literature from national and regional history into high school and college classrooms.
Refereed Articles and Chapters
“Music Video Distortion and Posthuman Technogenesis.” More Than Illustrated Music: Aesthetics of Hybrid Media Between Pop, Art, and Video, edited by Kathrin Dreckmann and Elfi Vombert, Bloomsbury, Forthcoming Feb. 2023. New Approaches to Sound, Music, and Media.
Schöberlein, Stefan, and Kristen Lillvis. “Movable: Narratives of Recovery and Place.” The Southern Quarterly (special issue, "The Digital South"), forthcoming.
Lillvis, Kristen, and Ivy Scoville. “‘Chicken Noodle Soup’ and Some Theory on the Side.” Critical Pedagogy, Race, and Media: Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education Teaching, edited by Susan Flynn and Melanie A. Marotta, Routledge, 2021, pp. 225-37.
Rollins, Anna, Kristen Lillvis, Shoshannah Diehl, and Cynthia McComas. “Improving Students’ Comprehension of STEM Writing Conventions.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 45, no. 1-2, Sept./Oct. 2020, pp. 10-17.
"Glitcherature’s Scrambled Skeuomorphs and Transformative Reading Practices." Textshop Experiments, vol. 7, 2020.
“Teaching Butler’s ‘Bloodchild’ and the Tenets of Afrofuturism.” Approaches to Teaching Octavia E. Butler in the Academy, edited by Tarshia L. Stanley, The Modern Language Association, 2019. Approaches to Teaching World Literature.
Rollins, Anna, and Kristen Lillvis. “When Rubrics Need Revision: A Collaboration Between STEM Faculty and the Writing Center.” Composition Forum, no. 40, Fall 2018.
“Take Me to Your Lady Leader.” New Ohio Review, no. 20, 2016, pp. 175-78.
“Subjectivity and Solidarity in Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose.” Community Boundaries and Border Crossings: Critical Essays on Ethnic Women Writers, edited by Kristen Lillvis, Robert Miltner, and Molly Fuller, Lexington, 2016, pp. 25-36. Transforming Literary Studies.
“Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Slavery? The Problems and Promise of Mothering in Octavia E. Butler’s ‘Bloodchild.’” MELUS, vol. 39, no. 4, Winter 2014, pp. 7-22.
“Becoming Self and Mother: Posthuman Liminality in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 54, no. 4, 2013, pp. 452-64.
“Maternal Bodies and Posthuman Culture in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber.” Feminist and Critical Perspectives on Caribbean Mothering, edited by Dorsía Silva and Simone A. James Alexander, Africa World P, 2013, pp. 243-62.
“Essentialism and Constructionism in Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling.” Practicing Science Fiction: Critical Essays on Writing, Reading and Teaching the Genre, edited by Karen Hellekson, Craig B. Jacobsen, Patrick B. Sharp, and Lisa Yaszek, McFarland, 2010, pp. 168-82.
Podcasts, Reviews, and other media
Review of Marjorie C. Luesebrink Collection at ELO’s The Next, with Melinda White. Reviews in DH, vol. 4, no. 8, Aug. 2023.
“Recovery Hub for American Women Writers NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant Level I Final White Paper,” with Karin Dalziel, Jessica DeSpain, Jina DuVernay, Melissa Holmstead, Kezia Miller, Emily Rau, and Margaret Smith, Recovery Hub for American Women Writers, 2022.
Review of The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Collection, co-authored with Dene Grigar and Melinda White. The Recovery Hub for American Women Writers, 29 Aug. 2022.
“Episode 110: Parable of the Sower.” Schlow Library Podcast. Ben Drain, Lynnicia Massenburg, Kristen Lillvis, and Kendra R. Parker, 3 Feb. 2021.
Review of Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets, edited by Bianca Lynne Spriggs and Jeremy Paden. West Virginia History, vol. 14, no. 1, Spring 2020, pp. 49-51.
Directory entry for “The Struggle Continues,” by Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries. Electronic Literature Directory, 7 June 2017.