Department of English at the University of Virginia

Interests

American & African American Literature

Books and Editions

• Period editor, Norton Anthology of African American Literature (forthcoming).
• Pauline Hopkins. Of One Blood, Or the Hidden Self, edited
  And with an Introduction. Simon and Schuster, 2004.
• Frederick Douglass.  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, edited and with an introduction. Oxford University Press, l999.           
• Leaving Pipe Shop:  Memories of Kin. Scribner’s,1997 Paperback edition, W. W. Norton, 1998.
• Period Editor, "Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, l940-l960."
  Norton Anthology of African-African-American Literature, Henry Louis Gates and Nellie McKay, General Editors, l996.
• "The Changing Same":  Studies in Fiction by Black-American Women. Book length study. Indiana University Press l995.
• Slavery and the Literary Imagination, ed. with Arnold Rampersad. Johns Hopkins, 1988.
• Emma Dunham Kelley, Four Girls at Cottage City, ed. and introd. Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing, ed. and introd. Rutgers University Press, 1986.
• Jessie Fauset, Plum Bun, ed. and introd. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
• 'The Changing Same': Studies in Fiction by Black Women. Indiana University Press, 1994.

Articles

• "Diagnosis and Cure: Reading Cornel West's Race Matters," Black American Literature Forum (forthcoming).
• “Criticism in Transit:  Houston Baker, Sterling Brown and ‘The  South’” Forthcoming in American Literary History
• “’Must Have Been Some Kind of Love’: Sexualities Attachments In Faulkner.  Forthcoming in Annette Trepfzer, ed. Faulkner’s Sexualities. University Press of Mississippi.
• “Recovery Missions:  Imaging the Body Ideal,” in Michael Bennett and Vanessa Dickerson, eds. Recovering the Black Female Body:  Self-Representations by African-American Women. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
• “Soldier.” Review essay on June Jordan.  Women’s Review of Books, June 2001.
• "Viewing the Remains:  Death, Spectacle and the [Black] Family" in Marianne Hirsch, ed. The Familial Gaze, University Press of New England, l999.
• "Darkness Visible: Jamaica Kincaid's My Brother.  Review essay.The Women's Review of Books, 15 (January l998).
• "Transferences: Black Feminist 'Practice' in the Age of 'Theory,'" in Feminism Beside Itself, ed. Diane Elam and Robin Wiegman (Routledge, 1995).
• "Pecs and Reps: Muscling in on Race and the Subject of Masculinities," in Race: The Subject of Masculinities, ed. Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel (Duke University Press, 1997).
• "Recycling: 'Difference' and the 'Practice' of 'Theory,'" in Studies in Historical Change, ed. Ralph Cohen, 1992.
• "In the First Place: Making Frederick Douglass & the African-American Narrative Tradition," in Critical Essays on Frederick Douglass, ed. William Andrews, 1991.

Works in Progress

• The Racial Space of Feeling: Constructions of Emotion in African-America
• The Home Stretch: A Novel

Grants, Awards, Lectureships, Professional Appointments

• 2006 Honorary Doctorate, Purdue University
• 2001 National Endowment for the Humanities (Alternate)
• 1998 Paumanock Lecturer.  Long Island University
• 1998 Charles Eaton Burch Memorial Lecture, Howard University
• 1997 Frances E. W. Harper Prize for Literary Excellence for Leaving Pipe Shop from the Harper Literary Society, Shaker Heights, Ohio.
• 1997 Leonora Woodman Memorial Lecture, Purdue University
• 1994 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Washington, D. C. One-year fellowship
• 1993 Ella Weaver Memorial Lecture, Haverford College
• 1991 Miriam Lerenbaum Lecturer, SUNY, Binghamton
• 1991 Chancellor's Distinguished Lecture, University of California, Irvine
• 1989  Visiting Mellon Chair of Humanitites, Tulane University
• 1988 Helen Homans Gilbert Prize Lectureship, Harvard University
• 1985-1986 National Research Council (Ford Foundation), Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Harvard University
• 1983-1984 Mary Ingraham Bunting Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Radcliffe College
• 1983 Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Harvard University (Declined)
• 1984 American Philosophical Society Research Grant
• 1982 Reconstructing American Literature Institute Grant, Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, Yale University
• 1981-1985 Modern Language Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession, Co-Chair, 1983-1984
• 1980 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Grant, Yale University