Jodie Childers

Bio

A writer and documentary filmmaker, Jodie Childers is interested in 20th-century transnational American studies, Icelandic literature, cultural McCarthyism, and Cold War political rhetoric. Her creative work explores the psychic and environmental effects of extractivism and deindustrialization on Rust Belt Appalachia. She holds a PhD in English with a concentration in American studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College and an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh.

Recent Publications

“Depression Glass,” The Comstock Review, Spring/Winter 2025-26. Accepted Forthcoming,

“Revisiting the Time of the Toad: Blacklisted: An American Story,” American Quarterly. 78.1, 2026, pp. 151 – 171.

“When Pete Seeger Came to Pittsburgh Town,” Pittsburgh Review of Books, 15 December 2025.

“About Us,” Melange: A Journal of Prose Poetry and the Arts. Princeton University Printing, December 2025, p. 43.

“First Amendment in Flux: When Free Speech Protections Came Up Against the Red Scare.” The Conversation, 20 November 2025.

“‘Bitter Enemy’ of the State: The Political and Literary Reception of Halldór Laxness.” Journal of Transnational American Studies, 2024, pp. 65–90

“Hard Water: An Autoethnography of American Rust,” The AutoEthnographer, 2024. (three poems and artist’s memo)

“Returning to God’s Country: Louis Malle’s Encounter with the Midwest.” Middle West Review, Vol. 10, no. 2, 2024, pp. 253 –58.

“‘Claims to be an author’: Halldór Laxness’s American Years.” Resources for American Literary Study, vol. 44, 2023, pp. 184–211.

“Mapping Radical Poetic Geographies: The Sonnets of Frank X Walker and Maggie Anderson,” Revised and Reprinted in The American Sonnet: An Anthology of Poems and Essays. Edited by Dora Malech and Laura T. Smith. U of Iowa P, 2023, pp. 229–234.

“California Treason: Halldór Laxness and Upton Sinclair.” Comparative American Studies, vol. 19, 2022, pp. 136–151.

“Smelter,” Slippery Elm, 2022, pp. 30–31. (Finalist for Competition)

“Performing Dissent: Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson Before HUAC.” Transatlantica. Revue d’études américaines. 2021, no. 2, pp. 1–23.
 

Recent Film Work

Down by the Riverside (84 min)

Roles: Director, Cinematographer, Executive Producer

Down by the Riverside follows the unlikely story of the Clearwater, a boat that launched a movement. An intimate portrait of the legendary folk musician Pete Seeger, his spouse Toshi, and the grassroots community they anchored for over 40 years, the film takes the audience on a musical and nautical odyssey, showing how an unconventional campaign to save a beloved American waterway prompted a green revolution.

World Premiere

Woodstock Film Festival (2023)

Selected Festival Screenings

Athens International Film & Video Festival (official selection, 2024)
Berkshire International Film Festival (official selection, 2024)
Catalina Film Festival (official selection; screened in online exhibition, 2024)

Selected Theatrical Event Screenings

Screening and Director Q&A, Beacon Film Society, Howland Cultural Center, Beacon, NY, October 2026
Sustainability Film Series, Screening and Director Q&A, Ohio University, The Athena, Athens, OH, September 2026
Screening and Director Q&A, Fairfield Theatre, Fairfield, CT, August 2026
Screening and Director Q&A, Tompkins Corners Cultural Center, NY, August 2026
Screening and Director Q&A, South Street Seaport, New York, NY, August 2026
Screening and Director Q&A, Tara Theatre, Atlanta, August 2026
Screening and Director Q&A, Paramount Theater, Charlottesville, VA, July 2026 
Close Up Series, Screening and Director Q&A, The Orpheum of Upstate Films, Saugerties, NY, July 2026
Screening and Director Q&A, 4-Star Theater, San Francisco, July 2026
Screening and Director Q&A, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM, July 2026
Screening and Director Q&A, Somerville Theatre, Boston, MA, July 2026

Selected Grants, Fellowships, and Awards

Book Manuscript, Semifinalist, Jean Feldman Poetry Contest, 2026

Book Manuscript, Longlist, Terry J. Cox Award for Poetry, 2026

“Depression Glass,” Poem of Special Merit, Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest, 2025

Course Enrichment Grant, University of Virginia Library, 2025

Alternative Assignments, Faculty Learning Community Grant, University of Virginia, 2025

Finalist, Tennessee Williams Festival Fiction Contest, 2024

Vassar College Archives & Special Collections Research Grant, 2024

Digital Humanities Summer Institute Scholarship, Podcasting from Scratch, 2024

NEH Summer Seminar Grant Recipient, Rust Belt Humanities Lab, 2023

Finalist, Slippery Elm Poetry Contest, 2022

Book Manuscript, Longlist, Terry J. Cox Award for Poetry, 2021

The Leifur Eiríksson Foundation Fellowship, 2019

Recent Conference Presentations

“Writing Through the Lens: Documentary Filmmaking and Non-fiction Storytelling,” Association of Writing and Writing Programs Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, 2026.

“Rust Belt Excavations,” Appalachian Studies Association, Huntington, WV, 2026.

“Pete Seeger: A Complete Unknown.” World of Dylan Conference, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2025.

“The Politics of Aspiration: The Second Red Scare and the (un)American Dream,” The Nordic Association for American Studies Conference, University of Turku, Turku, Finland, 2025.

“Cultivating the Cinematic Imagination: Storyboarding the Writing Classroom.” MLA Innovation Room, Poster Presentation, New Orleans, January 2025.

“Making Citation Visible: Merging and Emerging Visions,” Roundtable. MLA, New Orleans, January 2025.

“‘Comrades and Co-operators’: The Politics of Community in American Left-Wing Magazines, 1911–1929.” The Politics and Poetics of Community Conference, Sorbonne University / Paris Nanterre University, 2024.

“Experiments in Nonsense: AI in the Writing Classroom.” Writing, Thinking, and Learning with AI: Exploring Relationships of Rhetoric and Artificial Intelligence Conference, SUNY Writing Council, 2023.

“The New McCarthyism(s)?” Nordic Association for American Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden, 2023.

“‘Unfriendly Artists Before HUAC,” Dissent in Transatlantic Perspective, Charles University, Prague, The Czech Republic, 2022.