Karen Poremski is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University. Her teaching and research focus particularly on Native American literature, women’s literature, and American literature before 1900. Her dissertation work studied captivity narratives—stories of settlers taken prisoner by natives—and argued that several U.S. authors between the Revolution and the Civil War used the tropes of captivity to change the cultural discourse about race, gender, and nationhood.
Poremski is Ohio Wesleyan's current Benjamin T. Spencer Professorship in Literature. Learn more about the Spencer Lecture.