African American/African Diaspora Studies
The University of Maryland is one of most highly rated centers for the study of African American and African Diaspora literature and culture. The expertise of our award-winning faculty ranges from the 15th century to the 21st century. We embrace an expansive vision of our field that moves across geographical and temporal borders. To track these histories and geographies, we draw on a range of approaches: archival research, history of the book, digital and new media, rhetorical studies, folklore and vernacular traditions, gender and sexuality studies, critical race theory, postcolonial and transnational studies. Among our area group’s great strengths is our conception of ourselves as a federation, linking with American, Postcolonial, Caribbean, and the Hemispheric and Transnational area groups. As one of the areas of excellence in the department, and ranked by U. S. News and World Report as one of the top ten programs in African-American literary studies in the country, we attract and support an extraordinarily strong cohort of graduate students. Our graduate students have had a very successful record of winning grants and tenure-track jobs.
Our departmental strengths are supplemented on campus by several archives and study centers, as well as by complementary departments and programs, including Comparative Literature, The Center for Literary and Comparative Study, Maryland Institute for the Humanities (MITH), the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Art and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, African American Studies, Women’s Studies, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.
Situated eight miles from our nation’s capital, the University of Maryland, College Park, is ideally located for anyone studying African American and African Diaspora literature and culture. In addition to the University’s own major research library, our students and faculty have access to major libraries, archives, and museums: the future National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, several Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, and the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.
Our Faculty
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Vincent Carretta Professor |
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Merle Collins Professor |
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Robert Levine Professor Distinguished Scholar-Teacher; Director, Center for Literary and Comparative Studies |
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Shirley Wilson Logan Professor Director, Writing Programs; Advisor, Rhetoric Minor; Chair, Campus Writing Board |
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Keguro Macharia Assistant Professor |
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Zita Nunes Associate Professor Director, Comparative Literature |
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Barry Pearson Professor |
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Carla Peterson Professor |
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Sangeeta Ray Professor Director, Graduate Studies |
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Mary Helen Washington Professor |
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Edlie Wong Associate Professor |
Faculty Bookshelf
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Professor Robert Levine Editor, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 1820-1865 W. W. Norton Publishing, 2012 |
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Professor Vincent Carretta Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage University of Georgia Press, 2011 |
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Professor Robert Levine Co-editor with Caroline F. Levander, A Companion to American Literary Studies Wiley-Blackwell, 2011 |
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Professor Robert Levine co-editor, The Works of James M. Whitfield: "America" and Other Writings by a Nineteenth-Century African American Poet" University of North Carolina Press, 2011 |
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Professor Carla Peterson Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City Yale University Press, 2011 |
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Professor Robert Levine Editor, Clotel, or The President's Daughter, by William Wells Brown Bedford, 2011 |
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Professor Robert Levine Editor, The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne Harvard University Press, 2010 |
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Associate Professor Edlie Wong Neither Fugitive Nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel New York University Press, 2009 |
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Professor Sangeeta Ray Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: In Other Words Wiley Blackwell, 2009 |
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Professor Robert Levine author, Conspiracy and Romance: Studies in Brockden Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Melville Cambridge University Press, 2009 |
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Professor Robert Levine Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Nationalism North Carolina Press, 2008 |
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Professor Shirley Wilson Logan Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth-Century Black America Southern Illinois University Press, 2008 |
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Associate Professor Zita Nunes Cannibal Democracy: Race and Representation in the Literature of the Americas University of Minnesota Press, 2008 |
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Professor Robert Levine Editor, Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile, by Herman Melville Penguin, 2008 |
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Professor Robert Levine Editor, with Samuel Otter, Frederick Douglass & Hermann Melville: Essays in Relation University of North Carolina Press, 2008 |
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Professor Robert Levine Editor, with Caroline Levander, Hemispheric American Studies Rutgers University Press, 2008 |
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Professor Robert Levine Editor, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Seventh Edition: Volume B: 1820-1865 W. W. Norton, 2007 |
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Professor Vincent Carretta Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man Penguin, 2007 |
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Professor Barry Pearson Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers University of Tennessee Press, 2005 |
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Professor Robert Levine editor, The House of Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne Norton Critical Edition, 2005 |
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Professor Vincent Carretta Editor, Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century University Press of Kentucky, 2003 |
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Professor Vincent Carretta Editor, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, by Olaudah Equiano Penguin, Revised and Expanded Edition, 2003 |
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Professor Robert Levine editor, Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader University of North Carolina Press, 2003 |
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Professor Vincent Carretta Editor, Complete Writings, by Phillis Wheatley Penguin, 2001 |
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Professor Robert Levine Editor, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, by Harriet Beecher Stowe Penguin; rpt University of North Carolina Press, 2000 |
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Professor Sangeeta Ray En-Gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives Duke University Press, 2000 |
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Professor Shirley Wilson Logan "We Are Coming": The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Southern Illinois University Press, 1999 |
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Professor Vincent Carretta Editor, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, by Quobna Ottobah Cugoano Penguin, 1999 |
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Professor Robert Levine Editor, The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville Cambridge University Press, 1998 |
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Professor Robert Levine Martin Delany, Frederick Douglasss, and the Politics of Representative Identity University of North Carolina Press, 1997 |
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Professor Shirley Wilson Logan Editor, With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women Southern Illinois University Press, 1995 |
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Professor Carla Peterson "Doers of the Word": African-American Women Speakers & Writers in the North (1830-1880) Oxford University Press, 1995 |
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Friday, February 8, 2013
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