Christy Williams PH.D.
College of Liberal Arts - Department of English and Applied Linguistics
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
DEPARTMENT CHAIR, ENGLISH and APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Christy Williams is Professor and Chair of the Department of English and Applied Linguistics at Hawai`i Pacific University. She teaches courses in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature, fantasy, and fairy tales. Her research focuses on contemporary fairy tales and retellings in literature and popular culture with an emphasis on gender and narrative. She co-edited Beyond Adaptation: Essays on Radical Transformations of Original Works, is the Fairy Tales and Folk Narratives Division Head for the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, and is an Associate Editor for Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies. Her recent book, Mapping Fairy-Tale Space: Pastiche and Metafiction in Borderless Tales, examines the metafictional use of fairy tales in contemporary literature and television, and it is a 2022 recipient of the Chicago Folklore Prize.
EDUCATION
Ph. D. in English, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa
M. A., Virginia Commonwealth University
B. A., University of Tennessee, Knoxville
A. A, Pellissippi State Community College
COURSES RECENTLY TAUGHT
ENG 3150 Television Studies
ENG 3228 Fantasy Literature
ENG 3250 Texts and Gender: Fairy Tales
ENG 4100 Seminar in Textual Criticism
ENG 4120 Seminar in Modernism
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
Mapping Fairy-Tale Space: Pastiche and Metafiction in Borderless Tales. Wayne State University Press, 2021.
Beyond Adaptation: Essays on Radical Transformations of Original Works. Edited by Phyllis Frus and Christy Williams. McFarland, 2010.
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
“Ambiguous Villains and Fairy-Tale Monsters in Kelly Link’s ‘The Cinderella Game.’” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 29, no. 1, 2018, pp. 68-85.
“Novels.” The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, edited by Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc, Routledge, 2018, pp. 565-571.
“Who’s Wicked Now? The Stepmother as Fairy-Tale Heroine.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 24, no. 2, 2010, pp. 255-71.
“The Shoe Still Fits: Ever After and the Pursuit of a Feminist Cinderella.” Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity, edited by Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Eve Matrix, Utah State UP, 2010, pp. 99-115.
“Mermaid Tales on Screen: Splash, The Little Mermaid, and Aquamarine.” Beyond Adaptation: Essays on Radical Transformations of Original Works, edited by Phyllis Frus and Christy Williams, McFarland, 2010, pp. 194-205.
“The Silent Struggle: Autonomy for the Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers.” The Comparatist, vol. 30, 2006, pp. 81-100.
AWARDS
2022 Chicago Folklore Prize, second prize for Mapping Fairy-Tale Space: Pastiche and Metafiction in Borderless Tales. Awarded by the American Folklore Society and the University of Chicago.
2020 Golden Apple Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching. Awarded by Hawai‘i Pacific University.
2009 Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize for “The Shoe Still Fits: Ever After and the Pursuit of a Feminist Cinderella.” Awarded by the Women’s Section of the American Folklore Society.
