CV

Education

PhD, Cornell University, in English, Dissertation, “Aesthetic and Ideological Radicalism in the 1930’s: The Fiction of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes.” Dissertation Director: J. Saunders Redding. Areas of Specialization: African American Literature, African and Caribbean Literature, 19^th Century American Literature and Culture

MPS, Cornell University: Africana Studies. Thesis: “Blackness, Womanness and Art: Towards a Theory of Black Feminism.” Thesis director: Roseanne Pope Bell

MA, Northwestern University: English.

BA, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: English and Journalism

Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone (research semester)
Summer Institutes: University of Iowa (Charles Davis, Richard Corrigan); University of Missouri, Kansas City (Robert Farnsworth)

Faculty Appointments

2012-pres — University Distinguished Professor, Department of English, University of Kansas
1999-2011 — Professor of English, University of Kansas
1998-1999 — Langston Hughes Visiting Professor, English Department, University of Kansas
1990-1998 — Associate/Full Professor of English & African-American Studies, Northeastern University. Promoted 1994
1989-1990 — Visiting Associate Professor of African American Studies, Harvard University
1983-1989 — Assistant and Associate Professor of English, University of Mississippi. Promoted 1988
1980-1983 — Lecturer/Assistant Professor of English, Chicago State University

Administrative Positions

2022 – present — Founding Director, History of Black Writing
1983- 2022 — Director, History of Black Writing
2004-10 — Founder/Director, Language Matters National Teaching Initiative, Toni Morrison Society
2002-2006 — Founder/Director, Langston Hughes National Poetry Project

Research Publications and Creative Work

Major Books

2022 — The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker. Oxford UP
2016 — Mobile and Entangled Americas. Ashgate
2015 — Au dela du visible ordinaire/Beyond the Ordinary visible: Essays on Toni Morrison. University of Paris.
2011 — The Cambridge History of African American Literature. Cambridge UP
2004 — Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel. Cambridge UP
2002 — Conversations with Margaret Walker . University Press of Mississippi
2001 — Fields Watered with Blood: Critical Essays on Margaret Walker. U of Georgia
1998 — Teaching African American Literature: Theory and Practice. Routledge
1997 — On Being Female, Black and Free: Collected Writings of Margaret Walker. U of Tennessee
1995 — Conversations with Ralph Ellison. University Press of Mississippi
1990 — How I Wrote JUBILEE & Other Essays on Life & Literature by Margaret Walker. Feminist Press
1988 — The Complete Poems of Frances E.W. Harper: An Annotated Critical History. Oxford UP

Exhibitions, Curatorial

2013 — “Transcultural Mobility Seen through African American Cultural Production, Bielefeld, GE
2011 — Faces of Haiti, Resolute in Reform, Resistance and Recovery.
1990 — Exhibit Curator, “African American Holdings in the American Antiquarian Society” and Exhibit Catalog, Afro-American Authorship in the Collections of the American Antiquarian Society. Worcester, MA. February

Selected Book Chapters, Introductions

2020 — “Life Writing in the Americas,” Routledge Handbook to Culture and Media of the Americas, Ed. Giselle Anatol, Wilfried Raussert. Routledge
2016 — “Just a Small Step: From Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place to Mobile and Entangled and Americas,” Introduction, Mobile and Entangled Americas. Rutledge
2014 — “From the Village to the World: Toni Morrison’s Critical Geography,” Au delà du visible ordinaire / Beyond the ordinary visible: Essays on Toni Morrison. University of Paris
2014 — “Margaret Walker and the Practice of Poetry: An Introduction,“ This is My Century: Collected Poems by Margaret Walker. U of Georgia Press (
2013 — “Black is Gold’: African American Literature and New Literacies,” The Living Canon: Contemporary Theory and Pedagogy in African American Literature. Indiana UP
2009 — “A Blessed Life,” Shaping Memories: The Lives and Times of Women. U Press of Mississippi
2008 — “Negotiating Memory: Nationalism, Globalism and the New World Novel,” Transcultural Visions of Identities in Images and Texts, Universitatsverlag: Heidelberg, Germany
2001 — “‘I Want to Write, I Want to Write the Songs of My People,’” Fields Watered with Blood: Critical Essays on Margaret Walker. U of Georgia Press.
1993 — “Censorship and Richard Wright’s Black Boy,” Censored Book. Scarecrow
1993 — “Langston Hughes: The Practice of a Social Art,” Critical Perspectives Past/Present. Amistad.
1993 — “Introduction,” The Outsider by Richard Wright. HarperCollins (Harper Perennial edition).
1986 Callaloo 9:3 (Summer)–special issue on Richard Wright.

Articles

2002 — “Langston Hughes: The Beat Goes on,” Crisis (January/February): 36-39. Invited
2000 — “The Final Clenching: An Introduction to Margaret Walker,” Meridian 5 (Spring): 94-117. Peer-Reviewed
1999 — “Margaret Walker: Fully a Woman, Fully a Poet,” The Black Scholar 29(2-3): 37-46. Peer-Reviewed
1996 — “Healer in the Village: Toni Morrison,” Humanities 17:1 (March/April): 28-31. Invited
1993 — “Introduction,” The Outsider. HarperCollins (Harper Perennial edition) xi-xxix
1990 — “Bearing Witness in Black Chicago: A View of Selected Fiction by Richard Wright, Frank London Brown, and Ronald Fair,” CLA Journal 33:3 (March): 280-97. Peer-Reviewed
1986 — “Introduction,” Mississippi Writers: Reflections of Childhood and Youth. Vol. II (Nonfiction). Ed. Dorothy Abbott. University Press of Mississippi. xii-xxx
1990 — “The Origins of Afro-American Fiction,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 100: 231-49. Peer Reviewed
1988 — “The Afro-American Novel Project,” Journal of Literary Research 13(1): 21-31. Peer-Reviewed
1986 — Callaloo 9:3 (Summer)–special issue on Richard Wright. Edited with Introduction. Johns Hopkins Journals Group. Peer-Reviewed
1980 — “The Shaping of a Cause: American Romanticism and the Black Writer,” CLA Journal 24:1 (September): 16-25. Peer-Reviewed
1975 — “Frank Yerby, King of the Costume Novel,” Essence (October): 70-92 (Peer-Reviewed)
1973 — “Politics in Black and White: A View of Walt Whitman’s Career as a Political Journalist,” CLA Journal 17:2 (December, 1973): 263-70. Peer-Reviewed

Minor Publications and Creative Work

2010 — “Margaret Walker,” The Chicago Renaissance, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Ed. Steven C. Tracy. University of Illinois. Invited
2009 — “Lineage: A Margaret Walker Song Cycle,” a musical performance/adaptation of Margaret Walker’s poetry volume For My People by composer Randy Klein. KU Hall Center for the Humanities. A mixed media performance, consisting of music, vocals, visuals, and dialogue
2009 — An Interview with Edward P. Jones, African American Review Spring 33 (3/4 Fall):421-438.
2006 — Review. Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, African American Review 40:3 (Winter):10-12.
2003 — “Ralph Ellison 1913-1994: A Brief Biography,” The Oxford Historical Guide to Ralph Ellison. Ed. Steven C. Tracy. Oxford UP (with Jeffery D. Mack). 19-55. Invited.
2000 — KU Poets (From English 570; privately published)
1997 — “The African American Novel,” Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, Trudier Harris. Oxford UP: 541-548. Invited.
1996 — Review. Frances Smith Foster, ed. Minnie’s Sacrifice; Sowing and Reaping: Trial and Triumph: Three Undiscovered Novels by Frances E. W. Harper. African American Review 30:2 (Summer): 302-04
1994 — Review. Francis Foster. Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892; Frances Smith Foster, ed. Minnie’s Sacrifice; Sowing and Reaping: Trial and Triumph: Three Undiscovered Novels by Frances E.W. Harper. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 14:2 (Fall): 384-87
1994 — “Margaret Walker,” Heath Anthology of American Literature, rev. ed., Ed. Paul Lauter, et al. D.C Heath. Invited.
1994 — “Margaret Walker (1915) Writer,” Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History. Ed. Jack Salzman and Robert O’Meally. Macmillan. Invited.
1993 — “The Fusion of Ideas: An Interview with Margaret Walker,” African American Review 27:2 (Summer): 279-86
1991 — Review. Elliot Butler-Evans. Race. Gender and Desire: Narrative Strategies in the Fiction of Toni Cade Bambara,Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, Studies in American Fiction 19:1 (Spring): 20-22. Invited
1990 — Review Essay: “Historicizing the Black Experience: or, Telling One’s Own Story.” August Meier and Eliot Rudwick. Black History and the Historical Profession 1915-1980; Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Figures in Black: Words Signs and the “Racial” Self; Houston A. Baker, Jr. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance; Jean Fagan Yellin, ed. Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself; and Melvin Dixon. Ride Out the Wilderness: Geography and Identity in Afro-American Literature. College English 52:2 (February): 194-202. Invited
1989 — Introduction to Afro-American Studies: A Peoples College Primer. Peoples College Press, 1989 (with Abdul Alkalimat and Ronald Bailey)
1988 — Review. Valerie Smith. Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative, Legacy 5:1 (Spring): 59-50. Invited
1984-1988 The Afro-American Novel: A Study Guide. Annual publication. University of Mississippi.
1986 — Mississippi Mindscape: Rituals. Mississippi Humanities Committee (with Joanne V. Hawks)
1986 — “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper,” Dictionary of Literary Biography: Afro-American Writers from the Before the Harlem Renaissance. Ed. Trudier Harris. Gale Research. 164-173. Invited.
1985 — Review. Nellie McKay. Jean Toomer Artist, Black American Literature Forum 19:2 (Summer):91-93
1984 — Student Writers Handbook. University of Mississippi, 1984
1984 — “Charles Johnson,” Dictionary of Literary Biography: Afro-American Novelists Since 1955. Ed. Thadious Davis and Trudier Harris. Gale Research. 124-127.
1983 — Review. Alice Walker. The Color Purple, Freedomways 23(4): 16-18
1982 — “Frank Yerby, King of the Costume Novel,” Excerpt Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit: Gale Publishing. 491. Invited

Digital Publications

2010 — Margaret Walker Papers: A Digital Archive, 2008-2010. (Funded by Ford Foundation). Advisory editor.
2010 — Advisory Editor, Oxford Bibliography Online. Invited.
2008 — “Harlem Renaissance,” Digital Schomburg. Invited.
2008 — “Toni Morrison and the New World Novel,” 2008. Invited.
1999 — Library of Black America, Encarta Africana 2000, Microsoft Corporation (75 novels from the Project on the History of Black Writing). Invited.

Selected Scholarly Presentations and Public Lectures since 2015

2022 — “Black Books & Data: The Black Book Interactive Project,” National Humanities Center, December
2021 — “A Dante Afterlife: LeRoi Jones’ [Imamu Baraka] System of Dante’s Hell and Derek Walcott’s Omeros, “Visions of Dante: 700 Years of Dante Alighieri,^” Johnson Museum, Cornell University, October
2020 — “Song of Solomon: Bearing Witness and Cultural Knowing,” Toni Morrison: Two Generations Later, University of Paul Valery, Montpellier, France, September
2020 — “The Life and Times of Academic Empire,” MLA Convention, Seattle, January
2019 —“The Black Book as Tradition and Innovation: From Textuality to Materiality, Theory to Practice,” Black Bibliographia Conference, University of Delaware, April
2019 — “Digital Tools, New Narratives,” From Lists to Links: New Directions in Black Bibliography Yale University, October
2018 — “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire,” Movements, Cultures, and Resistance in the Black Americas, Bielefeld University, Germany, January
2018 — Georgia State University, Provost Visiting Scholar, February – March “Margaret Walker and the Emancipation of Black Womanhood: From Theory to Practice”, “Research Strategies for the Humanities”, “Engaging Scholarship in a Predatory Environment”
2018 — “Margaret Walker: Lost Southern Writer,” Decatur Public Library, Decatur, GA, January
2017 — “Fifty Years of Jubilee,” African American Read-in, Augusta State University, GA, February
2016 —“Frank Yerby: Good, Bad, and Ugly,” Yerby Centennial, Paine College, Augusta, GA, March
2015 —“The Digital Turn in Humanities Studies: Problems-Prospects,” Beijing Foreign Studies U, Nov
2015 — “Black Poetry in Motion: Notes toward a Transcultural Poetics,” 4^th Convention of the Chinese/American Association of Poetry and Poetics (CAAP), Shandong Normal U, Jinan, Nov
2015 — “Incidents in the Life of a Genre: Autobiography and Self-Invention,” Inaugural University Distinguished Professor Lecture, University of Kansas
2015 — “The Last Whippoorwill Call of Evening: The Poetic South,” Natchez Literary Festival, June
2015 — “Reading American Modernist Poets: Langston Hughes & Margaret Walker, Harbin (China) Engineering University, November

Selected Major Funding

2021 — “The Black Literature Network,” Building Knowledge through a Digital Media Datasphere,” Mellon Foundation, $800,000
2021 — “Building Literacy and Curating Critical Cultural Knowledge in Digital Humanities (BLACK DH),” NEH-ODH, $375,000)
2021 — “Black Book Interactive Project: III, NEH, Research Resources, $350,000
2020 — “Scholar-Curated Worksets for Analysis, Reuse & Dissemination, Mellon Foundation $499, 995 (Co-PI) with HathiTrust Research Center
2020 — “Hurston on the Horizon: Past, Present, Future,” NEH: Education, $200,000 (Co-PI)
2018 — “Black Book Interactive Project: Extending the Reach,” ACLS/Mellon, $150,000
2016 — “Black Book Interactive Project,” NEH-ODH Planning Grant, $40,000
2015 — “Seshat: A Howard University Digital Humanities Initiative,” NEH, $100,000 (Co-PI)
2014 — “Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement,” NEH, $159,000
2012 — “Don’t Deny My Voice: Reading/Teaching African American Poetries,” NEH, $189,000
2010 — “Language Matters IV: Reading/Teaching Toni Morrison in Translation,” NEH, $25,000
2009 — “Making the Wright Connection: Teaching Black Boy, Native Son, and Uncle Tom’s Children,” NEH, $200,000 (digital and onsite project)
2004 — “Language Matters II: Reading/Teaching Toni Morrison: Cardozo Model,” NEH, $75,000
2003 — “Speaking of Rivers: The Langton Hughes National Poetry Project,” NEH, $234,000
2002 — “Language Matters I: Reading /Teaching Toni Morrison,” NEH, $25,000
2001 — “Speaking of Rivers: Taking Poetry to the People,” NEH Planning, $40,500
1999 — “Encarta Africana, ED. Henry Louis Gates, JR. Microsoft Corporation, $15,000
1996 — “The Middle Passage: The Making of the Atlantic World,” NEH, $221,000
1996 — CD-Rom Prototype, Lemuelson Foundation, $50,000 (PI)
1995 — “The Middle Passage and Beyond,” ASAALH/ Regional Institute, $25,000
1987 — The Afro-American Novel,” Planning Grant, Ford Foundation, $50,000

Honors and Awards

2021 — Before Columbus Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award
2020 — Chancellor’s Teaching Award, University of Kansas
2018 — Balfour S. Jeffery Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Higuchi Endowment, Kansas
2018 — Provost Visiting Scholar, Georgia State University
2015 — Distinguished Visiting Overseas Professor, Central China Normal University, and Harbin Engineering University, China
2013 — Fellow in America & Gender Studies, Bielefeld University, Germany
2012 — University Distinguished Professorship, University of Kansas
2010 — International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent Lifetime Achievement, CSU
2009 — Senior Research Fellow, University of Texas, San Antonio
2005-2007 — John Hope Franklin Fellow, National Humanities Center
2005 — Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship (declined)
2005 — Darwin Turner Award for Outstanding Contributions in Scholarship, American Literature Ass.
2005 — American Embassy Fellow (Germany and Denmark). 5 lectures: “African American Studies and the Liberal Arts Tradition”
2002 — Senior Fellowship, American Committee of Learned Societies
1997 — Mellon-Schomburg Fellow, NYPL (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)
1996 — Smithsonian Fellow, National Museum of American History
1995 — Ford Senior Fellowship, Association for the Study of Afro-American History (Washington)
1993 — Mellon Resident Fellow, Stillman College, AL. Fall
1990 — W. E. B. Du Bois Fellow, Harvard University
1989 — Residential Fellow, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA
1981-1983 — Ford Post Doctoral Fellowship
2007 — Grier Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Teaching, University of Kansas
2005 — Steeples Award for Outstanding Service to the People of Kansas
2005 — Outstanding Educator, University of Kansas Torch Chapter of the Mortar Board
2003 — Alice Dunbar Nelson Professor-in-Residence, Dillard University (2 weeks)
2002 — Women’s Hall of Fame, University of Kansas
1994 — Martin Luther King Social Justice Teaching Award, Boston City Council

Events