1998 Rockefeller Scholar-in-Residence
Blessed Assurance
Dr. Tate’s project, Blessed Assurance, is a nonfiction, personal sequel to her first book, A Southern Weave of Women: Fiction of the Contemporary South. Based on extensive primary and secondary research, Blessed Assurance details several generations of Dr. Tate’s Cherokee-Appalachian family and examine how ethnicity, gender, and poverty played roles in shaping her family’s history.
Dr. Tate earned her Ph.D. in English (with concentrations in twentieth-century American and British literature) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her M.A. in English literature and her B.A. in English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Dr. Tate is an associate professor of English at Shepherd College in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
During her stay at CSEGA, Dr. Tate presented her research to the Marshall community by speaking to several classes, the Appalachian Women’s Working Group, and two brown-bag lunch presentations. Dr. Tate also spoke to classes at Southern West Virginia Community College and participated in the CSEGA sponsored panel discussion The Cutting Edge: A Critical Look at Appalachian Studies. Dr. Tate has published articles in journals such as Mississippi Quarterly, Resources for American Literary Study, and Journal of East Tennessee History and has authored one book, A Southern Weave of Women: Fiction of the Contemporary South.