About

Melissa N. Parrish

Photograph of Melissa Parrish in a striped button up shirt, sitting on a pink chair next to a stuffed animal version of her dog, "Waldo."

Photo: Eric Vinh

I am an Assistant Professor of English and affiliated faculty in American Studies and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Smith College. In the Fall of 2024, I was a faculty fellow at the Brown University Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America.

I research and teach the intersections of contemporary US literature, poetry and poetics, and cultural studies.

My current book manuscript, Situation Normal: Emergency Poetics and the Rise of the American National Security State, examines poetry’s relationship to the way the rhetoric and rituals of national security have shaped all public emergencies in the US.

I am a member and advisor for the Five Colleges Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program.

I am an okay snowboarder and a novice whitewater kayaker.

I played softball at West Point (Army) and now serve as a faculty liaison for Smith College softball.

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