Trudier Harris, Ph.D.
Trudier Harris, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, has lectured and published widely in her specialty areas of African American literature and folklore. In 1994, Ohio State University, her alma mater, presented her with its first annual Award of Distinction for the College of Humanities.
Among her authored books are Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals; Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison; The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller's Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan; and Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature.
A member of the English faculty for twenty years, Professor Harris received the William C. Friday/Class of 1986 Award for Excellence in Teaching, and recently added the 2005 Board of Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching to her long list of teaching accolades.
Speech Topics:
· The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South
· African American Literature and African American Folklore: Twin Towers of African American Culture
· Celebrating Bigamy and Other Outlaw Behaviors: Zora Neale Hurston, Reputation, and the Myth of Feminism
· 'You Just Can't Fly on Off and Leave a Body': Flying as Metaphor in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon
· Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South (discussion of memoir)
· The African American Popular Literary Tradition
· Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Legacy in African American Literature
· Can Brer Rabbit Kill Television?: The Impact of Technology on the African American Folk Tradition
Lectures on the following individual authors:
- James Baldwin
- Charles Chesnutt
- Rita Dove
- Ralph Ellison
- Randall Kenan
- Yusef Komunyakaa
- Toni Morrison
- Gloria Naylor
- Alice Walker
- Margaret Walker
- Richard Wright
Links:
· http://english.unc.edu/faculty/harrist.html
