Jessi Morton

Jessi Rae Morton, Ph.D., is a literary scholar and writing educator from Appalachia.

Her research interests include feminist new materialist art making in twenty-first century literature, film, and digital texts. Her work has appeared in The Comparatist and Critique, and she has reviewed books in the Southern Review of Books, American Book Review, and the Chicago Review of Books.

Dr. Morton’s research and pedagogy both emphasize object-oriented and new materialist approaches to multimodal texts. Though her research often focuses on literary texts and film, she also has expertise in the scholarship of teaching and learning, with extensive online writing instruction experience.

Recent Scholarly Activity

CIVIQ Team Teaching Grant – awarded Fall 2025, course taught Fall 2026

AI Faculty Fellow with the Center for Teaching and Learning, Spring 2025

Media Literacy Conference, invited panelist, April 2, 2026

Publications

Morton, Jessi Rae. “Melancholic Hope: Futural Collaborations in Nia DaCosta’s Candyman.” The Comparatist, vol. 49, no. 1, 2025, pp. 225–38, https://doi.org/10.1353/com.2025.a972433.

Morton, Jessi Rae. “Most Alive: Vibrant Taxidermy and Art as Futural Practice in Kristen Arnett’s Mostly Dead Things.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 23 July 2024, pp. 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2024.2383292

Morton, Jessi Rae. “Object Ontologies, Relationality, and Collaborative Aesthetics: Purloined Things in Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere.” The Comparatist, vol. 47, 2023, pp. 329-347.