Trudier Harris

Trudier Harris

Professor Emerita

Education

  • PhD, American Literature and Folklore, The Ohio State University, 1973
  • MA, English, The Ohio State University, 1972
  • BA, English, Stillman College, 1969

Research Areas

  • African American Literature

Selected Publications

Books Authored

  • From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature (Paperback; Alabama, 2023).
  • Depictions of Home in African American Literature (Rowman & Littlefield—Lexington Books, 2021).
  • Martin Luther King Jr., Heroism, and African American Literature (Alabama, 2014).
  • The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South (LSU, 2009).  Choice magazine selected it as one of its “Outstanding Academic Titles” of 2009.
  • Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South (memoir; Beacon, 2003).
  • South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature (Georgia, 2002).
  • Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature (Palgrave/St. Martin’s, 2001).
  • The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller’s Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan (Georgia, 1996).  (Lamar Memorial Lectures)
  • Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison (Tennessee, 1991).
  • Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin (Tennessee, 1985).
  • Exorcising Blackness:  Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals (Indiana, 1984).
  • From Mammies to Militants:  Domestics in Black American Literature (Temple, 1982).

Books Co-edited

  • Reading Contemporary African American Drama: Fragments of History, Fragments of Self (Peter Lang, 2007—with Jennifer Larson).
  • The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature (Oxford, 2001).
  • The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology (W. W. Norton, 1998).
  • Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  • The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (Oxford, 1997).
  • The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States (Oxford, 1995). [Edited essays on African American women writers and topics related to the study of African American literature.]
  • Afro-American Poets After 1955 (Gale Research, 1985).
  • Afro-American Writers After 1955:  Dramatists and Prose Writers ( Gale Research, 1985).
  • Afro-American Fiction Writers After 1955 (Gale Research, 1984).

Books Edited

  • New Essays on Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (Cambridge, 1996).
  • Selected Works of Ida B. Wells-Barnett (Oxford, 1991).
  • Afro-American Writers, 1940-1955 (Gale Research, 1988).
  • Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940 (Gale Research, 1987).
  • Afro-American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance (Gale Research, 1986).

Selected Contributions to Books

  • “Image Shatterer: Delores Phillips’s The Darkest Child,” in Mothers Who Kill, edited by Charlotte Beyer and Josephine Savarese (Bradford, Ontario, Canada: Demeter, 2021), 275-91.
  • “Christianity’s Last Stand: Visions of Spirituality in Post-1970 African American Women’s Literature,” in ‘My Soul Is A Witness’: Reimagining African American Women’s Spirituality and the Black Female Body in African American Literature, ed. Carol E. Henderson (Basel, Switzerland: MDPI, 2021), 103-114.
  • “From Jody’s Point of View . . .” in Critical Insights: Their Eyes Were Watching God, ed. Robert C. Evans (Salem Press/Grey House Publishing, 2021), 65-78.
  • “Foreword” to The Real Education of Sweet Papa T, a memoir by Woodrow “Max” Parker memoir (BookEnds Press, 2017), pp. ii-v.
  • “Mask-Wearing and Tightrope-Walking”; Preface to Like One of the Family: Domestic Workers, Race, and In/Visibility in The Help, ed. Fiona Mills (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), pp. ix-xiii.
  • “African American Lives: Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Eldridge Cleaver.”  In Cambridge Companion to Autobiography, eds. Emily O. Wittman and Maria DeBattista (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 180-194.
  • Untangling History, Dismantling Fear: Teaching Tayari Jones’s Leaving Atlanta,” for The Contemporary African American Literary Canon: Theory and Pedagogy, ed. Lovalerie King and Shirley Turner-Moody (Indiana, 2013), pp. 269-284.

Selected Articles

  • “Grandmothers, Culture, and Legacies.” Tribute to Randall Kenan in The Mississippi Quarterly. 73.3 (2020): 272-73.
  • “Christianity’s Last Stand: Visions of Spirituality in Post-1970 African American Women’s Literature,” special issue of Religions (2020, 11, 369), ed. Carol E. Henderson. 18 July 2020. 12 pages.
  • “When Art Devolves Into Horniness and Pimping: Reflections Upon Questionable Creativity in Ntozake Shange’s ‘a photograph: lovers in motion’”; CLA Journal 62:1 (March 2019), 9-21.
  • With Suzanne M. Edwards. “Gloria Naylor’s ‘Sapphira Wade’: An Unfinished Manuscript from the Archive.” African American Review 52: 4 (Winter 2019): 323-340.
  • “Aun’ Peggy: Charles Chesnutt’s Vampire Slayer?” North Carolina Literary Review 28 (2019); 104-115.
  • “Aborted Rituals of Communion: Food as Drugs and Drugs as Food in Jesmyn Ward’s Where the Line Bleeds.” Xavier Review Special Issue on Jesmyn Ward, edited by Robin Vander and Thomas Bonner Jr., 38:2 (Fall 2018): 34-49.
  • “The Limits of Lovemaking and Community: Infertility in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, Seville, Spain (2017).
  • “Alice Walker’s ‘Roselily’: Meditations on Culture, Politics, and Chains.” Southern Quarterly 54:2 (Winter 2017): 28-48.
  • “Romantic and Romanticized International Journeying: Marita Golden’s Migrations of the Heart.” Obsidian II: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora 41: 1-2 (Fall 2015): 209-235.
  • “Peace in the War of Desire: Richard Wright’s ‘Long Black Bong.'” CLA Journal 56:3 (March 2015): 188-208.
  • “Does Northern Travel Relieve Slavery? ‘Vacations’ in Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s Wench.” South Atlantic Review 78: 3-4 (Fall 2015): 90-109.
  • “Nikki Giovanni: Literary Survivor Across Centuries,” in Appalachian Heritage 40:2 (2012): 34-47.
  • “The Terrible Pangs of Compromise: Racial Reconciliation in African American Literature,” in The Cresset LXXV No. 4 (2012): 16-27.

Selected Awards, Honors, & Grants

  • Winner of the SAMLA Honorary Member Award, 2021
  • “Dr. Trudier Harris Intercollegiate Black History Scholars Bowl” established by the Black Faculty Staff Association at the University of Alabama; Inaugural Bowl, February 2021.
  • National Humanities Center Fellowship (2018-2019)
  • The Richard Beale Davis Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern Literary Studies (2018)
  • SEC Faculty Achievement Award for the University of Alabama (2018)
  • The Clarence E. Cason Award in Nonfiction Writing, The University of Alabama (2018)
  • Honorary Degree, The College of William and Mary (2018)
  • Selected by Graduate Students in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama to deliver the annual Last Lecture (2017)
  • The “Trudier Harris Distinguished Professorship” created at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2014)
  • Inducted into the Stillman College Educator Hall of Fame (2013)
  • Elizabeth Agee Award for Best Manuscript in American Literary Studies, University of Alabama Press (2013)
  • College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award for The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South (2010)
  • Inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent (2010)
  • Faculty Director, Honors Study Abroad Program, Cape Town, South Africa (Fall 2006)
  • John Hurt Fisher Award for “Career Achievement in Letters” from the South Atlantic Association of Departments of English (2005)
  • State of North Carolina Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching (2005)
  • Faculty Marshal, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2003-2009)
  • Eugene Current-Garcia Award—Alabama’s Distinguished Literary Scholar (Spring 2002)
  • Presented “Divine December,” the Commencement Address for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on 20 December 2001
  • William C. Friday/Class of 1986 Award for Excellence in Teaching (2000)
  • National Humanities Center Fellowship (1996-1997)
  • Residence at the Rockefeller Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy (19 September–17 October 1994)
  • The Ohio State University, College of Humanities, Distinguished Alumni Award (1994)
  • Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1989-90)
  • Roscoe B. Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (UNC, Spring 1988)
  • South Atlantic Modern Language Association Teaching Award (1987)
  • College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award for Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin (1987)

Selected Memberships in Scholarly and Professional Organizations

  • Modern Language Association; American Folklore Society; South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA); College Language Association; The Langston Hughes Society; The Richard Wright Circle; The Toni Morrison Society (Charter Member); The Zora Neale Hurston Society; The Alice Childress Society; The St. George Tucker Society.

Professional Conferences and Invited Lectures

Since I entered the profession in 1973, I have lectured throughout the United States, as well as in Poland, Germany, France, Canada, Jamaica, Spain, Italy, England, Northern Ireland, and South Africa.  Brief named lecturing appointments have included: Woodrow Wilson Scholar-in-Residence at Spelman College (1989) and at Bennett College (1990); Martin Luther King, Jr./Cesar Chavez/Rosa Parks Visiting Distinguished Scholar in English at Wayne State University (1989); Eudora Welty Professor of Southern Studies at Millsaps College (1990); Mellon Scholar-in-Residence at Stillman College (1991); NEH Visiting Distinguished Scholar at the University of Nevada at Reno (1991); Alice Dunbar-Nelson Eminent Scholar, Dillard University (2003); and Brackenridge Distinguished Visiting Proressor, UT San Antonio (2015).