Professor English
African American literature and culture; Afrofuturism; the digital humanities; The Harlem Renaissance; history of the novel; literature and legal studies; literature and medicine; race and visual culture; apocalyptic literature; detective fiction.

englishd@macalester.edu

She is currently at work on a “post-monograph,” a purely digital, book-length project on Afrofuturism. Her second book, Each Hour Redeem: Time and Justice in African American Literature, was published in March 2013 from the University of Minnesota Press. (Each Hour Redeem) Her first book, Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, was published in 2004. Before she joined Macalester's faculty in 2003, she taught African American Literature at Bowie State University, one of the oldest historically black colleges in the nation. Prior to entering graduate school, she worked in the public health field.

Areas of Study

• African American literature and culture
• Philosophies of time in African American literature
• The Harlem Renaissance
• American modernism
• History of the novel
• Literature and legal studies
• Race and visual culture
• Detective fiction

2012-2013 Courses

• African American Literature to 1900 (275-01), Fall
• topics in African American Literature: Harlem Renaissance (380-01), Fall
• African American Literature to 1900 (275-01), Spring
• African American Literature from 1900 to present (276-01), Spring
• Seminar: Special Topics in Literary Studies, (400-01), Spring

Selected Publications

• Each Hour Redeem: Time and Justice in African American Literature. Forthcoming March 2013 from the University of Minnesota Press.
• "Beloved." Literary Encyclopedia. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, and Janet Todd. 26 May 2011.
• "The Harlem Renaissance." Blackwell Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Fiction.Eds. David Madden and Patrick O'Donnell. UK: 17 December 2010; USA: 3 January 3 2011.
• Being Black There: Racial Subjectivity and Temporality in Walter Mosley's Detective Novels.NOVEL 42.3 (Fall 2009): 361-365.
• “The Modern in the Postmodern: Walter Mosley, Barba ra Neely, and the Politics of Contemporary African American Detective Fiction.“ American Literary History 18 (Winter 2006).
• Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (University of North Carolina Press, 2004)
• “W. E. B. Du Bois's Family Crisis.” American Literature. (June 2000).
• “Selecting the Harlem Renaissance.” Critical Inquiry. (Summer 1999).
• “Somebody Else's Foremother: David Haynes and Zora Neale Hurston.” African American Review. (Summer 1999).

Selected Awards and Honors

• Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2004 by the American Library Association (forUnnatural Selections)
• University System of Maryland Women's Forum Faculty Research Award, 2001
• MLA's Foerster Prize, 2000

Links

• Unnatural Selections
• Each Hour Redeem: Time and Justice in African American Literature

BA: Oberlin College

MA and PhD: University of Virginia