MSU’s Swanson earns statewide humanities award for leadership, scholarship
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies Kemeshia Randle Swanson is the university’s 2026 Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year, a statewide honor celebrating her exceptional teaching, visionary scholarship and deep commitment to advancing the humanities across the Magnolia State.
Sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council, the award includes an honorarium and recognition at the annual Public Humanities Awards ceremony this March in Jackson. As part of the award, Swanson will deliver a public lecture at MSU’s Mitchell Memorial Library on Feb. 3 at 3:30 p.m. in the John Grisham Room.
Her talk, “Mississippi as Memory: Landscape, Loss and Legacy,” will explore how Mississippi’s history, rich culture and complicated legacy remain imprinted on the landscape and continue to shape both progress and pride. The presentation draws on Swanson’s current research on the work of two-time national book award winner and Mississippi native Jesmyn Ward.
“We have such a wonderful crop of students here at MSU—so much so that in my short time here, I have already been pushed and extended in the best ways,” said Swanson, an MSU faculty member since 2024. “Universitywide—especially among English majors—students come to me well-read, hungry to learn more and full of empathy and compassion for the world. As a result, I always feel compelled to research, prep and be more so I can offer them the best possible learning experience. I’m grateful my students value that effort, my colleagues see and appreciate my dedication and the state has now acknowledged it as well. It is truly an honor.”
MSU College of Arts and Sciences Dean Rick Travis congratulated Swanson on the award and said her teaching and scholarship “strengthen communities and open doors to deeper understanding.”
A Mississippi Delta native, Swanson holds a joint appointment in English and African American Studies. Her research and teaching focus on 20th and 21st century African American literature, Southern literature, gender and sexuality studies, and hip hop and popular culture. She is the author of the book “Maverick Feminist: To Be Black and Female in a Country Founded Upon Violence and Respectability,” a 2024 University Press of Mississippi publication. It received that year’s Eudora Welty Prize and earned a nomination for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award.
Her forthcoming monograph “Love and War: Intimacy and Activism in the Works of Jesmyn Ward” is under contract with the University Press of Mississippi and expected in 2027. She also is editor of the 2025 UPM publication “Conversations with Jesmyn Ward” and coeditor of “The Oxford Handbook on American Street Literature,” expected in 2026.
She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Alabama in 2014, master’s degree from the University of Mississippi in 2009 and bachelor’s degree from Tougaloo College in 2007.
The Mississippi Humanities Council is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information about MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English, visit www.cas.msstate.edu and www.english.msstate.edu.
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