Faculty

Daylanne English

Associate Professor of English & Chair

M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia
B.A., Oberlin College

Daylanne English received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and her B.A. from Oberlin College. 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. She has also held visiting appointments in African American Literature at Brown University and in Caribbean Literature at Brandeis University. Prior to entering graduate school, she worked in the public health field. She is currently at work on a second book titled Political Fictions: Time and Justice in African American Literature, 1773-2007.

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

Fall 2009 Courses

• Introduction to African American Literature
• Topics in African American Literature: Harlem Renaissance

Previous Macalester Courses

• Post-Modern African American Literature
• African American Literature to 1900
• History of a Literary Genre: African American Detective Fiction
• Novel
• African American Literature from 1900 to the Present
• American Voices
• Topics in 19th Century African American Literature: From Non-Fiction to Fiction: 19th Century African American Narratives
• History of a Literary Genre: Letters & Diaries

Selected Awards and Honors

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

Selected Major Publications

• “Being Black There: Racial Subjectivity and Temporality in Walter Mosley’s Detective Novels.” NOVEL 42.2 (Fall 2009). Forthcoming.
• “The Modern in the Postmodern: Walter Mosley, Barbara 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).

Links

• Unnatural Selections
• The University of North Carolina Press