Rebekah Aycock

Rebekah Aycock holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Kansas and a B.A. in Media and Journalism and American Studies from UNC Chapel Hill. Her dissertation, “The Affective Life of Burglary in U.S. Law and Culture,” explored burglary in U.S. legal and popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century. In addition to her written work, Rebekah uses needlework to explore and comment on topics of crime, domesticity, and national identity.

While at KU, Rebekah also taught in the departments of American Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In addition to her research and teaching, Rebekah serves as a web editor for Capacious: A Journal for Emerging Affective Inquiry. Read Rebekah’s selected CV here.

Her research has been funded by a variety of internal and external grants and fellowships, including the Southern Historical Collection‘s Pre-Dissertation Prospectus Fellowship at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Hall Center for the Humanities‘s Graduate Student Travel Grant at the University of Kansas. In 2022, she was awarded the Social Justice Research Award, which is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Research Excellence Initiative.

Rebekah has presented her research at several national conferences including the American Studies Association, the Cultural Studies Association, and the American Literature Association.

Reading rooms at the University of Mississippi and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Kansas, Rebekah has taught as Instructor of Record in the departments of American Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She combines feminist and digital humanities pedagogical values to better serve students from diverse backgrounds and incorporates creative projects in the classroom. From 2020 to 2021, Rebekah served as the Communications Chair of the graduate teaching assistant union at the University of Kansas, GTAC AFT Local 6403.

Photos from class trips to the Spencer Museum of Art, the Spencer Research Library, and outside Blake Hall at the University of Kansas

Digital Humanities Class Projects

In the summer of 2019, students in Rebekah’s AMS 101: American Identities contributed to a class website, American Identities in Public Memorials, by conducting fieldwork on local memorials and writing blog posts exploring topics of identity, memorialization, and public history. In the spring of 2020, Rebekah was funded by a Course Development Grant from the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities to expand this project and adjust it for the limitations posed by Covid-19. The mapping project below was one addition that resulted from this grant.

Zine Projects

Students in the Fall of 2022, students in WGSS 333: The Politics of Physical Appearance and WGSS 327: Perspectives in LGBTQ Studies, put together zines exploring themes of gender, sexuality, race, justice, and beauty. These projects allow students to explore topics of particular interest to them while learning about the history of radical publishing platforms.

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• Mail

rebekahjoa@gmail.com