Department of English

Education

• Ph.D., English, The University of Georgia
• M.A., English, The University of Georgia
• B.A., English, Flagler College

Teaching and Research Areas
American Literature (Colonial & Federal, Long 19^th Century, Southern, African American, Multiethnic); Early Black Print Culture; Citizenship Studies; Transatlantic Studies; Archives and Historical Memory; Public Humanities 

Manuscripts in Progress

• Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Now in England. London, England: 1855. Co-edited with Evan Leavitt. (forthcoming with The University of Georgia Press)
• Print Commons: Black Writing and Cultivating in the Presses of Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes, 1892-1918  

Edited Book 
The Magnificent Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Transatlantic Reformer and Race Man. Co-edited with Barbara McCaskill and Rev. Paul Walker, Pastor of Highgate Baptist Church, Birmingham, England. The University of Georgia Press, 2020. 

Selected Articles and Essays

• “‘sit still and remember’: Woolson’s Keepers and the Problem of the Archive.” Secret Histories: A New Era in Constance Fenimore Woolson Scholarship, eds. Kathleen Diffley, Caroline Gebhard, and Cheryl Torsney. The University of Georgia Press, 2025.
• “‘Unquestioned Citizenship’: History, Poetry, and Black and Native Military Service in Hampton Institute’s Southern Workman.” American Literature, vol. 96, no. 4, Fall 2024, pp. 579-605. Special Issue, “New Citizenship Studies,” eds. Carrie Hyde and Derrick Spires.
• “Up From the Soil: Agricultural Productions, Racial Uplift, and Cultivating Citizenship in the Southern Workman.” American Periodicals, vol. 34 no. 1, Spring 2024, p. 1-21.
• “Youth, Work, and Community in the Social Justice Agenda of Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Transatlantic African American Minister.” Journal of Transatlantic Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, February 2022, pp. 1-22. Co-written with Barbara McCaskill.
• “Black Soldiers, Public Memory, and the Recuperative Work of Historical Fiction in Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s ‘Esteve, the Soldier Boy.’” Women’s Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, Spring 2021, pp. 23-36.
• “Black, White, and Native: The Multiracial Writing Community of Hampton Institute’s Southern Workman.” The Southern Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 2, Winter 2019, pp. 63-81.

Digital Humanities/Public History Projects

• Co-Director, John Brown’s Slave Life in Georgia (in progress, digital companion to new edition)
• Co-Director, Black Activism: A Transatlantic Legacy, https://blackatlantic.franklinresearch.uga.edu
• Exhibit Curator, Digital Library of Georgia and New Georgia Encyclopedia, https://georgia-exhibits.galileo.usg.edu/spotlight/convict-labor 

Awards
Dr. Serafini’s work has been supported and/or recognized by the Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Council on Public History, and the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council.