Introduction
I'm a lifelong athlete and lover of words; feminism came a bit later, but is all the more cherished for it. At Penn State, I juggled DI sports (springboard diving) with classes in the Honors College. I married those two loves in my first job as a sports reporter, before heading back first to Penn State and then to Virginia Tech for Master's degrees: Education followed by English. At Tech, I was lucky to be mentored by two Cherokee professors, who guided my research on Native American literatures. In my PhD, an all-female team of professors fostered my interest in Native women's rhetoric and led me to add a certification in Women and Gender Studies to my scholarship.
At UST, my love for sports writing has reemerged, along with my love for camaraderie and competition. I teach sports literature as a core and as an honors course; I teach Native literatures at the undergraduate and graduate level; and I teach women's literatures and women, gender & sexuality studies for both the English and the WGSS departments. I also compete, alongside other UST women, in the YWCA triathlon every August. My current area of research is on women and sports, and I am writing a book that combines elements of memoir with feminist theory and sports history.
Dr. Wilkinson's teaching and research brings together seemingly divergent interests in indigenous literature, feminism and sports.A former college athlete herself, Dr. Wilkinson is writing an article about 19th and 20th century female athletes and women's suffrage, and a book on sports and feminism.