Dr Kristen Treen
Lecturer in American Literature
- Phone
- +44 (0)1334 46 2198
- ket4@st-andrews.ac.uk
- Office
- Room 101
- Location
- Beethoven Lodge
Biography
Dr Kristen Treen studied for a BA in English (2009) at Jesus College, Cambridge, before completing her M.Phil in American Literature (2011) and her Ph.D (2017), as a Wolfson Postgraduate Scholar in the Humanities, at King's College, Cambridge. She joined the University of St Andrews in 2018.
Research areas
Kristen's research focusses on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American literature and its formal intersections with objects and material states. Her first monograph, States of Destreuction: Literature, Material Culture, and the American Civil War, 1861-1905, currently under revision, traces how the material remnants left behind by the American Civil War shaped literary form, commemorative expression, and concepts of national identity between 1861 and 1905.
Kristen has written on the impact of Civil War objects on current affairs in the States for Apollo and the U.S. National Council for Public History. Her interest in Civil War commemoration is also reflected in 'Commemorative Cultures: The American Civil War Monuments Project', a large, long-term, collaborative digital heritage project she co-created with Dr Jillian Caddell. The project's growing website, data set, and collection of materials can be found here.
More recently, this work has led to a collaboration with the U.S. National Park Service team at Camp Nelson National Monument in Kentucky. It has also resulted in two externally-funded projects of which Kristen is PI: 'Histories of hope? Museum Redevelopment at Camp Nelson National Monument' (AHRC Catalyst Award, 2025), and 'Remembering Refugees: Black Civil War Memory and Contemporary Commemoration' (Leverhulme Research Project Grant, 2025).
Kristen's next large research project will consider emergent approaches to commemoration and creative, intellectual, and political writing about memory during the Reconstruction era.
PhD supervision
- Clare Murphy
Selected publications
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Open access
Forgetting George Washington Dugan: public memory, emancipation, and the Concord Soldiers’ Monument
Treen, K. E., 18 Nov 2024, In: The Dial: A Journal of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society. 1, 1, p. 106-115 10 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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The act of borrowing; or, some libraries in American literature
Treen, K., 30 Sept 2022, Libraries in literature. Crawford, A. & Crawford, R. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 159-180 22 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
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Open access
Literature and the material cultures of Confederate remembrance
Treen, K. E., 4 Aug 2022, The Cambridge companion to the literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Diffley, K. & Hutchison, C. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 213-228 16 p. (Cambridge companions to literature).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
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Open access
"A Shell and What Became of It": missile narratives and commemorative trajectories at Gettysburg
Treen, K. E., 31 Jan 2020, In: Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures. 70/71, 4, p. 453-470Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Unraveling confederate sentiment: the unfinished story of a sock
Treen, K. E., 1 Nov 2019, Visions of Glory: The Civil War in Word and Image. Diffley, K. & Fagan, B. (eds.). Athens: University of Georgia Press, p. 173-183 (UnCivil Wars).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review