Valerie Surrett teaches a variety of English classes at UNG and specializes in US literature, film, and television that features incarcerated people and prison settings. Her teaching and research are informed by her work with the Appalachian Prison Book Project and her experiences volunteering and teaching in prisons. Her current book project, Locked Up, investigates Americans’ longstanding cultural impulses to write, read, and watch stories about life behind bars, reading the prison as an iconic American literary and cinematic landscape.
Education
Ph.D., English, West Virginia University, 2017
MA, English, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, 2010
BA, English Literature, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, 2008
AA, English Education, Cape Fear Community College, 2006
Courses Taught
English 1101—English Composition I
English 1102—English Composition II
English 2111—World Literature I
English 2112—World Literature II
English 2115—Gender and Literature
English 2131—American Literature I
English 2132—American Literature II
English 2143—African American Literature
English 2150—Literature and Film
English 2160—Multicultural American Literature
English 2900—Intro to Literary Studies
English 3680—Contemporary American Literature
English 4635—Special Topics in African American Literature
Research/Special Interests
US prison literatures
Representations of prisons in US fiction, film, and television
Critical carceral studies
Critical race studies
Bio/necropolitics
Utopian studies and critical dystopias
Work Experience
Lecturer, West Virginia University English Department, 2017-2019
Graduate Teaching Assistant and Instructor of Record, West Virginia University English Department, 2011-1017
Part-time Faculty, University of North Carolina, Wilmington English Department, 2011
Graduate Teaching Assistant and Instructor of Record, University of North Carolina, Wilmington English Department, 2010
Various jobs that may seem irrelevant to my current career path but were formative nonetheless: record shop sales associate, assistant manager of a Little Caesars, Victoria’s Secret sales associate, T-Mobile sales associate, apartment complex leasing agent, and bartender
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
with Katy Ryan and Rayna Momen, “Women of Wisdom between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” Teaching Literature and Writing in Prisons. Eds. Patrick Alexander and Sheila Smith McCoy. Modern Language Association, 2023. 231-244.
“‘There’s nothing for you back there’: Reflective Nostalgia in Stranger Things.”Imagining the 1980s: Representations of the Reagan Decade in Popular Culture. Ed. Randy Laist. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2023. 11-22.
“Designed to Comply: Cyborg Potentialities in Lois Lowry’s The Giver.” Critical Perspectives on Artificial Humans in Children’s Literature. Ed. Sabine Planka. Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen & Neumann, 2016. 217-232.
“‘Always better, less rude, to talk about things that were the same’: The Necessity of Otherness to a Functioning Public Sphere.” Journal of Contemporary Thought No. 36 (2012): 139-57.
Additional Publications
“The High Costs of Free Prison Tablet Programs.” Books Through Bars: Stories from the Prison Books Movement. Eds. Moira Marquis and Mac Marquis. UGA Trade Press. 2024.