Research & Creative Activity

As a scholar of African American, American, and children’s literature, I examine literary form and genre; Black vernacular, literary and film traditions; conceptions of identity and place; and sociohistorical contexts for literature and film. My scholarship appears in such top-ranked journals as The Lion and the Unicorn and Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, and in the essay collections Literary Cultures and Twentieth-Century Childhoods (Routledge) and Who Writes for Black Children? African American Children’s Literature Before 1900 (Minnesota). My monograph, Tending to the Past: Selfhood and Culture in Children’s Narratives about Slavery and Freedom (2024), explores Black children’s book authors’ and filmmakers’ revisionary use of conventions of historical fiction to tell stories about Black survival during the eras of slavery and Reconstruction. Teaching Black Speculative Fiction: Equity, Justice and Antiracism (2024), which I co-edited with Education professor Dr. KaaVonia Hinton of Old Dominion University, includes sixteen essays that provide pedagogical support to pre- and in-service middle- and high-school teachers who have adopted (or might adopt) Black science fiction, fantasy, and horror narratives for their classrooms. In addition, I have co-edited special journal issues of Children’s Literature Association Quarterly (with Dr. Sara Austin) and International Research in Children’s Literature (with Dr. Michelle H. Martin). These special issues, along with my peer-reviewed essays, book chapters, public and scholarly lectures, and conference presentations, contribute to a rich scholarly discourse on children’s literature and African American literary traditions.