Expertise and Scholarship Statement

Rachel Bates is a poet and doctoral student at Old Dominion University. She studies Appalachian literature against cultural, regional, and ecocritical frameworks – and also writes about Appalachia in her own creative work. She is especially interested in New Materialist and Affective approaches to Appalachian literature and Appalachian Studies generally. Her research focuses on ecological futures and topographic temporalities. She foregrounds endurance and sustainability narratives in contemporary Appalachian literature that deconstruct traditional hierarchies and reflect current activism and conservation efforts in Appalachia. In this way, she endeavors to imagine better futures for Appalachia in the Anthropocene. 

Curriculum Vitae

Conference Presentations

• 2025 Old Dominion University Spring Writing Conference: "Secondary to Postsecondary Success: Exploring the K-16 Literacy Journey"

• 2025 Modern Atlantic Language Association: "Appalachia in the Anthropocene"

• 2024 Modern Atlantic Language Association: “Future Souths” Roundtable

• 2023 East Tennessee State University Literary Festival Invited Speaker

• 2022 South Atlantic Modern Language Association: “Motherly Horrors: Pregnancy, Monstrosity, and Interstitiality in Science Fiction”

• 2022 The View from the Anthropocene Conference in Debrecen, Hungary: “Rising ‘Cricks’: Considering Rivers and Flooding in Contemporary Appalachian Literature as Agential Geographic Assemblages within Appalachian Ecologies”

• 2022 Southeastern American Studies Association: [Re]claiming Homeland: Resistance and Reclamation in Affrilachian Poetry