Annette Debo | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Annette Debo

Professor and Chair

Department of English

Annette Debo is Professor and Chair of English at the University of Kentucky where she teaches 20^th and 21-century American literature. Her most recent book is The Necessary Past: Revising History in Contemporary African American Poetry (Northwestern UP, 2024). This book addresses the historical poem and argues that poets today are shifting the power dynamic in revising our shared history, reconfiguring who speaks and whose stories are told, and they write a past that frees readers to change the present and envision a more just future.

She has also published three books about the modernist writer H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) who was part of the expatriate circles of the early twentieth century. Her The American H.D. weaves together archival research and cultural history to tell a new story about the significance of nation in H.D.’s artistic vision and life. She edited H.D.’s Within the Walls and What Do I Love?, short stories and poems written in London in the midst of the Blitz and later years of World War II. She also co-edited the MLA Approaches to Teaching H.D.’s Poetry and Prose, is the past Co-Chair of the H.D. International Society, and has held the H.D. Fellowship at Yale’s Beinecke Library.

Contact Information

annette.debo@uky.edu

1203 Patterson Office Tower

(859) 257-3973

Education

Ph.D. University of Maryland, College Park
M.A. Virginia Tech
B.S. Virginia Tech

Research Interests

20th-century American culture and literature
21st Century American Literature
Modernism
African American Literature and Culture

Affiliations

English

Availability

Annette Debo is not teaching Fall 2025 but is available by appointment.

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

Books:

The Necessary Past: Revising History in Contemporary African American Poetry. Northwestern University Press, 2024.

Within the Walls and What Do I Love? by H.D. Edited and introduced by Annette Debo. University Press of Florica, 2014. 104-page introduction.

The American H.D. University of Iowa Press, 2012.

Approaches to Teaching H.D.'s Poetry and Prose. Eds. Annette Debo and Lara Vetter. Modern Language Association, 2011.

Articles:

"Historical Poetry in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge History of African American Poetry. Ed. Keith D. Leonard. Forthcoming in 2026. 6335 words.

"Normal Holmes Pearson, Canon-Maker." Modernism/modernity. 23.2 (April 2016): 443-462.

"Prospects for the Study of H.D." Resources for American Literary Study. 38 (2015): 1-19.

“‘How Many Blitz-Nights, Did You Spend in London?’: H.D., World War II, and (Re)Writing History.” H.D.’s Trilogy and Beyond. Eds. Hélène Aji, Antoine Cazé, Angès Derail-Imbert, and Clément Oudart. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2014. 37-43.

“Ophelia Speaks: Resurrecting Still Lives in Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia.” African American Review 42.2 (Summer 2008): 201-214. Reprinted in African-American Poets, Volume 2: 1950s to the Present, New Edition. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2010. 145-163. Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2013 and in electronic form in Gale’s Literature Resource Center.

“Signifying Afrika: Gwendolyn Brooks’s Later Poetry.” Callaloo 29.1 (Winter 2006): 168-181. Reprinted in Critical Insights: Gwendolyn Brooks. Ed. Mildred R. Mickle. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2009 and in electronic form in EBSCO Publishing’s Literary Reference Center.

“Reflecting Violence in the Warpland: Gwendolyn Brooks’s Riot.” African American Review 39.1-2 (Spring/Summer 2005): 143-152. Reprinted in Critical Insights: Gwendolyn Brooks. Ed. Mildred R. Mickle. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2009 and in electronic form in EBSCO Publishing’s Literary Reference Center. Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2013 and in electronic form in Gale’s Literature Resource Center.

“Whiteness and the Black/White Border in H.D.” Paideuma: Studies in American and British Modernist Poetry 33.2-3 (Fall/Winter 2004): 155-175.

“H.D.’s American Landscape: The Power and Permanence of Place.” South Atlantic Review 69.3-4 (Fall 2004): 1-22.

“Interracial Modernism in Avant-Garde Film: Paul Robeson and H.D. in the 1930 Borderline.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 18.4 (15 Nov 2001): 371-383.

“Power, Destiny, and Individual Choice: Gloria Naylor’s Naturalism.” CLA Journal 44.4 (June 2001): 492-521.

“Dickinson Manuscripts in the Undergraduate Classroom.” College Literature 27.3 (Fall 2000): 131-144.