PhD, English, Morgan State University

• Dissertation: The Influence of Rural and Urban Areas on the Female Communities in the

                    Works of Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, and Toni Morrison

 MA, English, Northwest Missouri State University

• Thesis: Witches as a Detrimental Influence on Society as Seen Through the Plays

                        Macbeth, The Witch, The Witch of Edmonton, and The Witches of Lancashire

Areas of Specialization:

• African American literature and culture (19^th-21^st centuries), American literature (20-21^st centuries), Ecocriticism, Feminism, Gothic literature, Science Fiction, and Young Adult literature

Books:

Marotta, Melanie A. African American Adolescent Female Heroes: The Twenty-First-Century Young Adult Neo-Slave Narrative. University Press of Mississippi, 2023. Children’s Literature Association Series. (ISBN: 9781496844972)

Marotta, Melanie A. and Susan Flynn, editors. Critical Pedagogy: Diversity, Inclusion, and the Visual in Higher Education, Routledge, 2021. Race and Ethnicity in Education series. (ISBN: 9781032120553)

Marotta, Melanie A., editor. Women’s Space: Essays on Female Characters in the Twenty-first Century Science Fiction Western. McFarland Publishing, 2019. Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy Series. (ISBN: 978-1-4766-7660)

Publications (selected):

Marotta, Melanie A. “Marge Piercy.” The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020. Edited by Patrick O’Donnell, Stephen Burn, and Lesley Larkin. Wiley-Blackwell, 2022.

Marotta, Melanie A. “A Cold Legacy and the Female Voice: Megan Shepherd’s Twenty-First Century Young Adult Adaptation of Frankenstein. Adaptation in Young Adult Novels: Critically Engaging Past and Present.” Edited by Dana Lawrence and Amy L. Montz. Bloomsbury, 2020.

---. “Cyberpunk Women: Blade Runner 2049 and its Contemporaries.” Film International: Journal of World Cinema, vol. 18, iss. 2, June 2020, pp. 76-88. DOI: 10.1386/fint_00024_1

---. The Science Fiction Horror: Alien and George R. R. Martin’s Nightflyers and Female Surveillance. Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook, vol. 17, iss. 1, Dec. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1386/nl_00005_1

---. “The Typecasting of Female Characters in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Disney’s Zootopia.” Critical Insights: Animal Farm. Edited by Thomas Horan, Salem Press, 2018.

---. “The Lessons That the Female Protagonists Learn That Transform Their Identities in ‘My Man Bovanne,’ ‘Gorilla, My Love,’ ‘Raymond’s Run,’ and ‘The Lesson’ from Toni Cade Bambara’s Gorilla, My Love.” Short Story Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 245. Gale (Layman Poupard), 2017, pp. 46-63.

---. “Liberation through Acceptance of Nature and Technology in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Theory in Action, vol. 3, no.1, 2010, pp. 38-50. DOI:10.3798/tia.1937-0237.10004