Tracy Seeley

Tracy Seeley grew up mostly in Kansas, and like many young Kansans, couldn't wait to leave. Going back thirty years later is the subject of her forthcoming book, My Ruby Slippers: the Road Back to Kansas (University of Nebraska Press, 2011). Always a book lover growing up, she also loved biology and had a hard time in college deciding between English and Biology. Literature finally won out, and she finished her B.A. in English from the University of Dallas. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in 19th-and 20th-century British literature from the University of Texas at Austin. She came to USF in 1993, after teaching for five years at Yale University in the literature and Bass Writing programs.

Dr. Seeley's literary research has focused primarily on the period between 1880 and 1939, with publications on Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, Joseph Conrad, Victorian women essayists, the poet and essayist Alice Meynell, and the 1890s Metaphysical Poetry Revival. Her creative work in nonfiction grew out of her teaching experience at Yale, where she fell in love with the essay. She began writing literary nonfiction during her year as NEH Chair in the Humanities at USF (2004-2005); as Chair, she also organized a two-week campus-wide arts event and a scholarly symposium devoted to the idea of place. That work eventually became My Ruby Slippers. She has also published literary nonfiction in journals such as the Florida Review and Prairie Schooner.

In the course of working on her book, Dr. Seeley became interested in the relation of literature to environmental thought, and has taught courses in Literature and Environment for USF's Core curriculum in literature. She is currently working on a series of essays about cities, humans and the natural world.

Dr. Seeley received the Distinguished Teaching Award at USF in 2001. She has been a finalist for the Iowa Review nonfiction award and the Brenda Ueland Nonfiction Prize. Her co-authored screenplay short won a Bronze Remy at the Houston International Film Festival, and she was a fellow of the Edward Albee Center for Creative Persons, fondly known as "The Barn."