Rose Casey
Rose Casey studies contemporary world literature, law and the humanities, theories of the novel, postcolonial studies, and aesthetic theory. Much of her work registers the enduring significance of the postcolonial as a framework for understanding globalized injustice in the twenty-first century. Her scholarship also analyzes style, genre, and aesthetics to recognize how fiction and poetry shape and bear material impact. This interest in generative critique underpins her broader project of recognizing literature’s transformative potential.
Dr. Casey’s first book, Aesthetic Impropriety: Property Law and Postcolonial Style, argues that literary works contribute to legal change not through overt activism but because their aesthetic composition both registers and produces new ideas. She makes this case by examining shared legal and aesthetic innovations across Nigeria, India, South Africa, and the Caribbean. She’s working on a new project, titled Inheriting Dispossession: Succession Law and South African Land Reform, that examines post-apartheid South African novels, narrative theory, and the role of inheritance law in racial injustice. Dr. Casey has published articles in the postcolonial environmental humanities, feminist legal theory, and contemporary literature in translation, among other fields. You can read more about her research here.
A committed teacher, Dr. Casey’s recent courses have focused on how and why we love reading literature, theories of the novel, global mystery stories, and twentieth- and twenty-first century literature. Her courses are shaped by interdisciplinary, postcolonial, and literary theoretical frameworks. Her teaching has been recognized by multiple awards and fellowships: she was selected as WVU’s Sigma Tau Delta Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 2024; appointed an Honors College Faculty Fellow in 2022–2023; and named an Eberly College Outstanding Teacher in 2021–2022. Dr. Casey is the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of English and works with PhD students on dissertation committees.
Actively engaged in promoting the humanities, Dr. Casey is on the Advisory Board for the WVU Humanities Center; participates in collective efforts to protect the public university; writes for public audiences; and plays a role in the local community, including reviving Morgantown NOW and serving as its first president.