Graduates: Koritha Mitchell, Ph.D.


Dr. Koritha Mitchell on SisterMentors:
When I joined SisterMentors, I had been in a 6-month writing slump. I was depressed and desperate for a way to end my writer's block so that I could free myself from graduate school and earn a decent living. I knew that the group would help me with goal-setting, and I felt that would save me. I was wrong; they did so much more than help me set goals. There's no question: without SisterMentors and Dr. Shireen, I simply would not have made it to the PhD. And I certainly would not be happy and making good progress now in my tenure-track position at a Research I institution. . . more	Dr. Koritha Mitchell SisterMentors Graduate
Bio
In Fall 2005, Dr. Koritha Mitchell began as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of English at The Ohio State University. She specializes in African American literature at the turn of the twentieth century, black drama & performance, and racial violence in American literature and culture. At the university, she teaches and mentors students at every level-from first-year undergraduates to doctoral candidates. Dr. Koritha Mitchell earned her doctorate from the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park in October 2005. Her dissertation is titled "A Different Kind of 'Strange Fruit': Lynching Drama, African American Identity, and U.S. Culture, 1890 - 1935." Dr. Mitchell examines thirteen black-authored plays and finds that, rather than call attention to the brutalized body, these texts spotlight the family left behind. She therefore argues that the playwrights aimed to build and sustain black communities, not simply to convince whites that lynching was wrong. While pursing the doctorate, Dr. Mitchell won financial support from the David Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora. She completed her dissertation with the help of a Ford Foundation fellowship. Dr. Mitchell is a native of Sugar Land, Texas (near Houston). She earned a Bachelor's degree in English Composition at Ohio Wesleyan University.