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Galbus

What is your area of interest?

Autobiography and memoir, philosophical literature, fiction written by American women, and poetry rooted in the Black Arts Movement, the aesthetic parallel to the Civil Rights Movement.

Many literary scholars specialize in a particular author or a single era. My research has developed as a set of recurring ideas. How does someone construct a satisfying life? How does a writer articulate the ideas that have shaped her life? How does literature tackle political issues without turning into propaganda? How can people use writing to solve problems and to learn about the world and themselves?

What are you currently working on in terms of research? What are the questions you are trying to answer?

I am writing two articles on biographical African American poetry. A. Van Jordan’s M-a-c-n-o-l-i-a (Norton 2004) is based on the life of a MacNolia Cox, a woman who placed 5^th in the national spelling bee in 1936. When the judges realized that an African American might win the contest, they gave Ms. Cox a word off the official list: nemesis. The book won a Whiting Prize.

The Baltimore poet Gloria Oden wrote an autobiographical volume called Resurrection after Oden’s mother and sister were shot to death in her mother’s house. Her most recent book, Appearances, came out in 2003. Oden’s work has been admired many famous poets, including Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, yet she appears to have been forgotten by history, and I’d like to bring her work more recent critical attention.

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