Kristina Bross

Promoted to Professor
Department of English
kbross@purdue.edu

Kristina Bross completed a Ph.D. and master’s degree in English at the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s in English at Lawrence University. Her research interests include early American studies – especially European-Native relations – early modern transatlantic studies, and violence in early America.

A faculty member in English and associate dean for research and creative endeavors in the Honors College, Bross received the Charles B. Murphy Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2004, is a member of Purdue’s Teaching Academy, and is listed in the Book of Great Teachers. She also received a Center for Undergraduate Instructional Excellence (CUIE) fellowship and was a Service-Learning Faculty fellow. She was a Fulbright Fellow in 2007 at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

Bross’ undergraduate courses cover early American literature, archival research, historical fiction, and science fiction. Graduate offerings include courses on colonial identities, early Native American writers, captivity narratives, early Caribbean literature in English, and violence in American literature.

A Purdue faculty member since 1999, Bross has chapters in several collections of essays and has published in the print journal Early American Literature and Common-place, an online journal of early American culture. She edited a collection of essays by Purdue undergraduates that presents their archival research into Purdue’s history: Little Else Than a Memory: Purdue Students Search for the Class of 1904 (Purdue Honors College, 2014), and recently her students documented their research into Purdue’s past through the blog, “More than a Memory.”

Her books include Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians in Colonial America (Cornell, 2004) and Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology (UMass, 2008), co-edited with Hilary Wyss.

Bross has taught honors courses through the Lilly Retention Initiative Grant, for the University Honors Program and through the Honors College. She has been a member of the Honors College Faculty Governance Committee since its inception.