I taught American Studies, American Indian Literature, Women’s Literary Traditions, and Environmental Literature for twenty years at the University of New Hampshire. In 1997 I was hired by Utah State University as the new editor of Western American Literature and director of graduate American Studies, positions I held for close to twenty years. There I primarily taught Cultural Studies of the North American West. I wrote about all these subject, as well as feminist criticism and theory. Some of my essays can be found at MelodyGraulich.com.
But now I am retired! Since retiring and divorcing in 2016, I have been free to travel new roads.
Some are literal: in the past five years, I have been to Cuba, Morocco, Peru, South Korea, Bolivia, Bhutan, Bulgaria (my “B” phase), Ecuador, Alaska, Portugal, and Croatia, my first post—if we are post—Covid trip. I will spend my 70th birthday in Sicily. If I didn’t know American Exceptionalism was bunk before, I certainly do now. But mostly these travels have made me fully aware of how little I do know and how exciting learning still can be.
I’m still writing occasional cultural history, but I’m wandering some other paths as well, writing fiction. As Krista and I discuss in our talk, I am working on a historical novel based on a woman painter I have written about in other contexts. I’ve written a number of short stories and actually have managed to publish a few. I have discovered that place and family are recurring themes in my fiction, not surprising since they also have been in my life.