Kelly Plante

Kelly Plante

Kelly Plante, PhD, is an essayist, editor, and teacher specializing in auto/biographical writing, gender, race, and empire in transatlantic eighteenth-century literary and cultural studies. Her writing has appeared in Creative Nonfiction Magazine, the University of Michigan's Bear River Review, Detroit-area newspapers, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Forum: Queer and Trans Approaches to the Study of Women and Gender, Aphra Behn Online (ABO): Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830 and Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and is forthcoming in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Lumen, and Twenty-First Century Digital Editing & Publishing, ed. James O’Sullivan (Edinburgh: Scottish Universities Press).

Her dissertation/first book project Death Writing: Gender and Necropolitics in the Atlantic World (1660–1840), defended in May 2023, won the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) 2024 William L. Mitchell Prize and the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Women's Caucus Émilie du Châtelet early career researcher prize. Her essay, “‘Equipt herself in the habit of a man’: Exposing Empire in the Female Spectator (1745–46) won the 2021 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Graduate Student Research Essay Prize. With Karenza Sutton-Bennett, Ph.D., she co-edits the Lady’s Museum Project, the very first critical and teaching edition of, and learning community around, Charlotte Lennox’s magazine the Lady’s Museum (1760–61), which has won the 2021 Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies D. W. Smith Research and the 2023 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Women’s Caucus Editing and Translation fellowships.

Plante received her PhD from and has taught writing and literature at Wayne State. She has served as co-chair for the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Digital Humanities Caucus, on prize committees for creative and peer-reviewed writing projects, numerous departmental teaching, mentorship, and curriculum committees, and as managing editor for the journal Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts (2021–23) and currently serves as managing editor for ABO, as an associate reader for Michigan Quarterly Review (MQR), the flagship literary journal of the University of Michigan.

Research interest(s)/area of expertise

the long and global eighteenth century, romanticism and death, life writing, periodicals, intersectional feminism and women’s writing, history from below, microhistory, journalism history, creative nonfiction, public and digital humanities

Research

Dissertation: Death Writing: Gender and Necropolitics in the Atlantic World (1660–1840)

Committee: Drs. Lisa Maruca, Jaime Goodrich, Michael Scrivener, Karen Marrero

Abstract: Death Writing: Gender and Necropolitics in the Atlantic World (1660–1840) explores life writing through its underworld of death writing, a term I use to convey the necropolitical aspects of these texts. Achille Mbembe defines necropolitics as the capacity to dictate who is able to live and who must die in a colonial zone. I analyze the necropolitical function of death writing in colonial hagiography, travel writing, wampum belts, death notices, newsprint epitaphs, posthumous memoirs, book reviews, and collected works. I argue that the newsprint obituary consolidated these forms’ functions into one genre to convey news of death with instant biography.

Chapters explore death writing in the Atlantic world by and about the first Indigenous saint, Catherine Tekakwitha, in the Jesuit Relations (1682) and Pierre F. X. de Charlevoix’s History and Description of New France (1745); periodical editors’ use of their own obituaries in the Gentleman’s Magazine (1754–1826) to create the dominant death writing system of the Atlantic world; GM editors’ use of the first newsprint death notices in an obituary section of African individuals including Ignatius Sancho (1780) and Sara Baartman (1816) for their own agenda; and the posthumous literary warfare against Mary Wollstonecraft (1797) and William Godwin (1836); culminating in reading Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748) as a 1,500-page obituary. I contend that we must curate our own collected works of long eighteenth-century death writing to correct the necropolitics that are our inheritance.

Education

PhD and MA (English), Wayne State University; BA (English & Journalism), Honors College, Oakland University

Awards and grants

• American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies Women’s Caucus Émilie Du Châtelet Award for Death Writing: Consolidating Power in the Atlantic World (1660–1840) (2024)
• William L. Mitchell Prize, Bibliographical Society of America (BSA), for my dissertation, Death Writing: Gender and Necropolitics in the Atlantic World (1660–1840) (2024)
• Editing and Translation Award, American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies Women's Caucus (2023)
• D. W. Smith Research Fellowship, Canadian Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (2021)
• Graduate Research Paper Prize, American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (2021)
• Graduate Student Assistantship, Wayne State University (2021–2023)
• Bear River Writers Conference Competition for Advanced Creative Writing Students at Wayne State University (2019)
• Graduate Travel Award, Midwest Modern Language Association (2018)
• Graduate Professional Award, Wayne State University Humanities Center (2018)
• Graduate Travel Award, Wayne State University English Department (2018)
• Graduate Teaching Assistantship, Wayne State University (2017–2021) 

 

News mentions

• Women’s Caucus Editing and Translation Prize Winners for 2023
• Ph.D. candidate in English wins ASECS Graduate Student Research Essay Prize (2021)
• English doctoral student awarded research fellowship (2021)
• From Warrior Women to Benedictine Nuns: Two New Digital Humanities Projects (2020)

Selected publications

 

Published articles in peer-reviewed journals

• “‘Equipt herself in the habit of a man’: Exposing Empire in Eliza Haywood’s the Female Spectator (1744–46).” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 19, no. 1: Queer and Trans Approaches to the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender (Fall 2024) (4,250 words)
• Kelly Plante and Karenza Sutton-Bennett. “‘A Numerous and Powerful Generation of Triflers’: The Social Edition as Counterpublic in Charlotte Lennox’s the Lady’s Museum (1760–61) and the Lady’s Museum Project (2021–).” Eighteenth Century Fiction 35, no. 2 (April 2023) (5,847 words)
• “The Lady’s Museum Project: A Digital Critical Edition in Phase 1 of Its Development, Now Available for Teachers and Students to Learn Collaboratively through Charlotte Lennox’s Lady’s Museum (1760-61).” ABO: Interactive Journal of Women in the Arts, 1640–1840 12, no. 1 (Spring 2022) (545 words)
• Ashley Bender, Kelly Plante, et. al. “WWA Reflection: Continuing to #WriteWithAphra: A Year of Collegiality and Compassion.” ABO: Interactive Journal of Women in the Arts, 1640–1840 11, no. 2 (Fall 2021) (6,248 words)

Forthcoming peer-reviewed articles and book chapter

• “‘A character immortalized’: John Nichols’s ‘Death Writing’ on Ignatius Sancho (1780–Present).” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 65, no. 3 (Fall 2024) (11,035 words)
• “‘The example and ornament in this transplanted Christian Colony’: The ‘Death Writing’ of St Catherine Tekakwitha and/in P. F. X. de Charlevoix’s Histoire et Description Générale de la Nouvelle France (1744).” Lumen: Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 42, 2023 (Fall 2024) (8,419 words)
• Kelly J. Plante and Karenza Sutton-Bennett. “‘The present therefore seems improbable, the future most uncertain’: Transcending Academia through Charlotte Lennox’s the Lady’s Museum (1760–61)” in Twenty-First Century Digital Editing & Publishing, ed. James O’Sullivan (Edinburgh: Scottish Universities Press, 2025) (5,885 words)

Published public humanities essays

• “The Lady’s Museum Project: An Open-access Critical and Teaching Edition of Charlotte Lennox’s the Lady’s Museum (1760–61).” The 18th-Century Common (Nov. 2023) (2,235 words)
• “The Warrior Women Project: An Open-access Critical and Teaching Edition of Dianne Dugaw’s ‘Warrior Women’ Ballads.” The 18th-Century Common (Nov. 2023) (1,443 words)
• “The Secret History of Creative Nonfiction: A Tour of Pioneering Women Writers whom Literary Critics Conveniently ‘Forgot.’” Creative Nonfiction Magazine 76: Exploring an Expanding Genre (2022) (2,521 words)
• “Marketing Empire: Military and Companionate Marriage Recruitment in Early English, ‘Warrior Women’ Broadside Ballads.” The Warrior Women Project (June 2020) (4,922 words)
• “The Story of the Warrior Women Project: Connecting Intersectionality and Digital Humanities Theory and Praxis.” The Warrior Women Project (June 2020) (2,375 words) 

 

Other qualifications directly relevant to courses taught

• over a decade's worth of experience in the field of business and technical writing, editing, product/project management and team leadership in the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps (civilian) for software and vehicle maintenance
• 4 years' experience as a weekly contributing writer at Detroit area newspapers, Real Detroit Weekly and the Oakland Press
• graphic/web design and coding (XML, XHTML, CSS)

Incremental coursework

• ENG 3120, English Literature after 1700, Online (fall 2020)
• ENG 3060, Technical Communication: Presentations, In-person (Spring/Summer 2019), Online (spring/summer 2020, spring/summer 2021)
• ENG 3050, Technical Communication: Reports, Online (academic year 2018–19, winter 2020, academic year 2020–21)
• ENG 1020, Introduction to College Writing, Lationa/o/x & Latin American Studies Cohort, In-Person (winter 2018)
• ENG 1020, Introduction to College Writing, In-person (academic year 2017–18)