The arrival of Allison Curseen and 乔纳森•霍华德 to the 太阳城网赌平台 faculty this academic year reflects the University’s commitment to strengthening its African American literature teaching and research.
Curseen and Howard were jointly appointed to the English Department and African and African Diaspora Studies Program, each bringing an interdisciplinary approach with fresh perspectives to examine African American fiction and non-fiction – and the African American experience – in larger contexts.
Curseen – who will formally begin teaching at BC next fall after her Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at Princeton University this academic year – said she was drawn to BC because the University had shown commitment to growing African and African Diaspora Studies and diversity in the faculty. 她补充说，不列颠哥伦比亚省的耶稣会传统是另一个优势.
Specializing in African American and 19th-century American literature and culture, Curseen has a particular interest in performance 以及绩效太阳城官网, 儿童太阳城官网, 以及逃亡和桀骜不驯的理论.
“African American literature from the 19th century is my first love,库尔西说。, whose most recent work appears in the collection Saving the World: Girlhood and Evangelicalism in the Nineteenth Century. “我喜欢那个时期语言的运作方式, where words are still the primary communicator for both the individual and public imagination.”
Curseen likes to encourage students to be attuned to nuances and details in literature – such as the way a character’s movements are depicted – that might not ordinarily capture one’s attention. This means sometimes being less focused on linear plot development, she said.
“Reading a text is like entering a conversation; you can join in at various points and in various ways and for various reasons, but that doesn’t mean that the whole conversation conforms to your point and manner of entry. 你还是得想办法去发现, 理解, and address what you missed and how that affects the way you view things.”
Curseen获得美利坚大学艺术硕士学位, a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and her doctorate from Duke University. Her honors include two Professional 工作人员 Congress-City University of New York awards, 来自巴鲁克学院的伯格伦浓缩基金, a Duke Summer 太阳城官网 Fellowship and the American University Thesis Award.
“Allison Curseen’s current research on movement and constraint of the black child’s body in 19th-century American literature, along with her future project on truancy in political and social movements, 是聪明的概念化和理论复杂吗,历史学副教授马丁·萨默斯说, 谁指导非洲和非洲侨民太阳城官网. “They are poised to make important contributions to African American literary studies, 儿童太阳城官网, 以及绩效太阳城官网.”
霍华德拥有杜克大学的博士和硕士学位, 获得宾夕法尼亚大学学士学位. 他获得了几项重要的学术奖项, 包括向巴西提供富布赖特太阳城官网资助, a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and a DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Graduate Fellowship.
“Coming to BC enabled me to pursue two areas – literature and African American studies – that have been a big part of my training,霍华德说。. “I liked the fact that there is institutional support for and commitment to this kind of scholarship.”
Howard’s scholarly interests center on environmental humanities as related to African Diaspora literatures, 这反映在他目前的出书计划中, The Blueness of Blackness – a study of the trope of water in African Diaspora literature – and in his undergraduate course Black Nature: Race and Ecology.
“The idea is to consider fully the black experience in the natural environment,” he said. “If race is a social construct, nature is as well – how do these two feed into another? 例如, elements of nature might be commonly associated with serenity and peacefulness, 而是在非裔美国人的历史上, 大自然可能充满敌意, 创伤性的:我们想到奴隶从船上被扔进大海, 或者用来私刑的树.
“My class addresses the myth that African Americans ‘don’t care’ about nature or pastoral writing. We look at how blackness creates a window for imagining how we exist within nature, 从压迫到同意再到反抗.”
Howard notes that the interdisciplinary dimension to Black Nature could be of interest to undergraduates majoring in natural sciences, 尤其是环境太阳城官网.
“我发现BC的学生很有思想, and very open to exploring connections between subjects that may seem unlikely but which can tell us a lot about the human condition.”
萨默斯赞扬了霍华德的工作. “His use of water as a trope to reimagine the age-old questions of ‘What does it mean to be black?以及“成为一个问题是什么意思??’是大胆和创新的. 他的太阳城官网，以及他目前的课程, Black Nature: Race and Ecology – speaks to the broader question of black people’s ethical relationship to the land.
“Both Curseen’s and Howard’s arrival nicely complements our current core faculty, 朗达·弗雷德里克和雷吉娜·让·查尔斯, 教授和太阳城官网非洲加勒比文学的人.”
英语教授宋敏, who chaired the search committee that interviewed Howard and Curseen, 在审查申请时这么说, “I was thoroughly impressed by how accomplished the candidates were – it’s clear to me that the study of African American literature is an exciting, 充满成就的学者和杰出的学者的重要领域. Both Jonathan and Allison rose quickly to the top of this very competitive pool of applicants, and I couldn’t be happier that they are now members of the English Department.”
——肖恩·史密斯/大学传播