Jill Colvin Jones, PhD
Professor of English
Jill Colvin Jones is a Professor of English at HL黑料门不打烊 where she teaches courses that include American Literature, popular culture, African American Literature, and the American gothic as well as听courses on听Mean Girls and听Breaking Bad.
Jones has published articles and chapters on mystery novels, con women, Zora Neale Hurston, Harriet E. Wilson, Toni Morrison, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, James Weldon Johnson, Connie May Fowler, Louisa May Alcott, and Jerry Springer and the Puritans. She also writes occasional op-eds and has appeared on podcasts and local television stations to discuss Hurston, Hemingway, hair products and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Areas of expertise and interest include American literature, film, and popular culture, and her presentations range from how women like AOC and Fanny Fern use the media to liberal arts education, from Frankenstein and Get Out! to Barbie, and always America: the promise, the politics, the dream, the Constitution, the literature, the pop culture, the television, the films.
Education
BA, University of New Hampshire
MA, University of New Hampshire
PhD, Tufts University
Courses Taught
American Literature from the Puritans to the Present
American Immigrants
Breaking Bad and the Great American Novel
Monsters in Literature and Film
Sin and Redemption in American Literature
Mean Girls In Literature and Film
Banned Books in America
Coming of Age in the World Novel
Autobiography
Zora Neale Hurston Senior Seminar
Absalom! Absalom! Junior Colloquy
The American Gothic
American Gothic and Horror in Literature and Film
Quests and Journeys in Lit and Film
The Filthy Rich and the Dirt Poor in Am Lit and Pop Culture
Ten Mind-Blowing Books
Con Men (and Women), Grifters and Hucksters in American Literature
Adaptation: Book to Film
American Women Writers: Alcott to Barbie
Book Chapters and Peer-Reviewed Publications
鈥淲hen Outlaws Become In-Laws: Louisa May Alcott and the Lady Grifter.鈥�Women Vigilantes and Outlaws in Popular Media from Reconstruction to the Great Depression: Who Was that Masked Woman?, Editors Gregory Bray and Andrew Ball. (Routledge, NY, forthcoming)
"Zora Neale Hurston鈥檚 Florida Beginnings: The Cakewalk, the Jim Crow Car, and Internalized Racism in Color Struck.鈥� Literary Floridas, Editors John King, Danita Berg, Nathan Holic.(McFarland, forthcoming).
鈥淓atonville, Florida: Mythologizing the First Incorporated Black Town.鈥�Florida鈥檚 Golden Age, Editors Maurice O鈥橲ullivan and Bruce Stephenson, (Florida Historical Society Press, 2018).
鈥淭aking the Axe to Babylon: Zora Neale Hurston鈥檚 鈥楲ost鈥� Caroline Stories, Gender, Place and Power.鈥� (Mississippi Quarterly, Fall, 2016).
鈥淐racker Redemption: Life, death, and homecoming in The Problem with Murmur Lee.鈥滻n Women of Florida Fiction: Essays on 12 Sunshine State Writers, EditorsTammy Powley and April Van Camp, (McFarland Press, 2015).
鈥淧assing for Racist:Cross Creek as a Cracker Coming-of-Age Story鈥� Florida Studies: Proceedings of the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Florida College EnglishAssociation.Editors:Maurice J. O鈥橲ullivan and Paul Reich, (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011).
鈥�Rights and Birthrights:The mis-reading of Jacob and Esau and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.鈥�Florida Studies: Proceedings of the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Florida College EnglishAssociation.Editors: Claudia Slate and Carole Policy, (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Jun 2010).
鈥淗ags and Whores: American Sin and Shaming from Salem to Springer.鈥� Journal of American Culture.(June, 2009):146-154.
"'The Eye of a Needle': Morrison's Paradise, Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom, and the American Jeremiad." The Faulkner Journal. (Volume XVII, Number 2. Spring, 2002).
"Cowboy kitsch" in Bad Boys and Bad Girls in the Badlands: Southwest Crime and Fiction,Steven Glassman and Maurice 0' Sullivan, eds. (Popular Press, October, 2001).
Interview with Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature, (2001).
鈥淐arol Hemingway's 'Two Girls': The Other Hemingway in Florida." The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature, (VllI, 1999): 95-100.
"The Disappearing 'I' in Our Nig." Legacy, 13.1 (June 1996): 38-53
"'You Don't Know about Me': The Disenfranchised Narrator in Nineteenth Century United States Fiction." DIA 56.10 (Apr 1996): 3959ADAINo.: DA9605706.
Conference Presentations
鈥淗ow to Go Viral Wearing Lipstick: Tips on Influencing from AOC to Fanny Fern.鈥� Northeast Modern Language Association, Boston, March 2024.
鈥淲hen Outlaws Become In-Laws: Louisa May Alcott and the Lady Grifter.鈥滱nnual Southwest Popular & American Culture Conference, Albuquerque, Feb., 2024.
鈥淶ora Neale Hurston鈥檚 Florida Beginnings: the Cakewalk, the Jim Crow Car, and Internalized Racism in Color Struck.鈥� Comparative Drama Conference, Orlando, April 2018.
Chair, 鈥淎frican American Theater,鈥� Comparative Drama Conference, Orlando, April 2018
鈥�The Hoochy Koochy and the Jim Crow Car: Zora Neale Hurston鈥檚 Color Struck.鈥� PCA/ACA Conference, San Diego, April 2017.
. 鈥淶ora Neale Hurston and Her Narrative Magic.鈥� Invited Lecture, UCF Art Gallery, Jan 2016.
2015, Panel Chair and Presenter for Mean and Nasty Girls , 鈥淲e have Met the Mean Girl and She is Us: Mean Girls, power and the American female coming-of-age text,鈥� Annual Southwest Popular & American Culture Conference, Albuquerque, 2015.
鈥淭eaching Sweat: Pedagogy and Zora Neale Hurston.鈥滷lorida Humanities Council Workshop, Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston and her Roots. HL黑料门不打烊, Summer, 2008-2013.
鈥淲hy Education is not a TED talk.鈥漇ummit on Transforming Learning, HL黑料门不打烊, 2012.
鈥淪ay it Ain鈥檛 So, Joe:Redemption in Angels in America,鈥� Annual Southwest Popular & American Culture Conference, 2012.
鈥淩ights and Birthrights: The Mis-reading of the story of Jacob and Esau in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.鈥滷lorida College English Association, 2011.
Podcasts, Television, Op-Eds, Radio, Blog
Introduction and Discussion Facilitation at The Enzian Theater, Nosferatu The Vampyre, Oct 16, 2021
鈥淎s Thomas Paine wrote, these are truly the times that try men鈥檚 souls.鈥� Orlando SentinelJun 3 2020
鈥淯pside to this upside-down world: Appreciating the little things.鈥� Orlando SentinelApril 10, 2020
Introduction and Discussion Facilitation at The Enzian Theater, The Haunting, Oct, 2020
鈥淶ora Neale Hurston,鈥� WUCF September 12, 2018 (OBD).Jon Busdeker, Producer, Brian Kelly, Sound.
鈥淪tudying politics: Teach students to think critically.鈥� Orlando Sentinel Sept. 1 2017
鈥淪arah Huckabee Sanders, Christianity and the face of the new GOP.鈥�Orlando Sentinel, March 20, 2017
鈥淓very Tongue Got to Confess Podcast鈥� Episode 10.
The Confess Blog: 鈥溾��
Service
Chair, Curriculum Committee, 2021
Executive Committee, 2021
Faculty Affairs Committee, 2018
Chair, CEC, Victoria Brown Mid-Course, 2018
Director, Lucy Cross Center for Women and Their Allies, 2015-2016, 2017-2018
Liason, Zora Neale Hurston Festival Academic Conference, HL黑料门不打烊, 2018
Chair, CEC, Martha Cheng, 2017
Chair, Academic Affairs Committee, 2014-2015
Academic Affairs Committee, 2014-2016
President of the A & S faculty, HL黑料门不打烊, 2011-2013
Chair, Executive Committee of the A & S Faculty, HL黑料门不打烊, 2011-2013
Awards & Honors
FYRST Grant, 2024-2025
HL黑料门不打烊 International Grant, 2023
Student Government Association Outstanding Faculty Award, HL黑料门不打烊, 2015
Professing Excellence Award, HL黑料门不打烊, 2015
Cornell Distinguished Teaching Award, HL黑料门不打烊, 2011