Her areas of specialty include Southern literature and the 20th century American novel. Her first book, The Rape Narrative and the American South (2007), explores the proliferation of sexual violence in modern Southern literature. Denise Shaw has also been published in Hollins Critic, African American History Reference Series, Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers, Infanticide in Its Global Context, Cleave, and Journal for the Association of Research on Mothering. Denise Shaw is a recipient of Duke University’s Mary Lily Research Grant, 2009 and a Co-Grantee of the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read, 2009-10.