Area(s) of concentration for highest degree: Nineteenth Century American Literature, Pre-Nineteenth Century American Literature, African-American Literature
Area(s) of research expertise (or creativity): Maryland Eastern Shore Writers; Waters Edward Turpin (novelist and playwright); Sarah Elizabeth Wright (novelist); Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man; The Harlem Renaissance; Freedom and Rebellion in American Renaissance Literature
Most significant publications (or creative works): Editor, Swords Upon This Hill: Preserving the Literary Tradition of Black Colleges and Universities (Baltimore: Morgan State University Press, 1984); Editor, Amid Visions and Revisions: Poetry and Essays on Literature and the Arts (Baltimore: Morgan State University Press, 1985); Editor, The Middle-Atlantic Writers Association Review I-XIX (June 1982-December 2004); Editor, Special Fifteenth Anniversary Issue of the “Middle-Atlantic Writers Association Review,” June 1994; Editor, Special Twenty-fifth Anniversary Issue of the “Middle-Atlantic Writers Association Review,” December 2004; “A Genesis for the Afro-American Family Saga: The Life and Works of Waters E. Turpin,” Middle-Atlantic Writers Association Review I (Spring 1982): 7-10; “’From a Well of Gloom Deep Within’: Black Matriarch in Turpin’s Let the Day Perish and Long Way Home.’” In Swords Upon This Hill: Preserving the Literary Tradition of Black Colleges and Universities (Baltimore: Morgan State University Press, 1984); “The Race and the Runner: Female Fugitives in the Novels of Waters Turpin and Sarah Wright.” In Amid Visions and Revisions: Poetry and Essays on Literature and the Arts (Baltimore: Morgan State University Press, 1985); “The Lincoln Years: Waters Edward Turpin at Mid-Career,” Middle-Atlantic Writers Association Review II (June 1986): 17-20; “Waters Edward Turpin,” Dictionary of Literary Biography: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. Ed. Trudier Harris. (Columbia: Bruccoli Clark, 1986): 289-295; “’This Was a Man’: A Tribute to Therman B. O’Daniel,” Langston Hughes Review V (Fall 1986): 1-4; “Rural Thesis v. Urban Antithesis in Toomer’s Cane,” Jean Toomer: A Critical Evaluation. Ed. Therman B. O’Daniel (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1987); “The Perilous and Unfinished Quest for the Mythopoeic Ideal-Waters Edward Turpin and the Saga of Achievement from Maryland’s Eastern Shore,” Zora Neale Hurston Forum XVIII (2003): 70-80
Current research or creative project(s): Editor, Middle-Atlantic Writers Association Review; Literary biography of Waters Edward Turpin
Recent major scholarly lectures at professional meetings: “The Perilous and Unfinished Quest for the Mythopoeic Ideal: Waters Edward Turpin and the Saga of Achievement from Maryland’s Eastern Shore,” Zora Neale Hurston Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, May 29, 2003; “James Weldon Johnson and the Mythopoeia of the Harlem Renaissance,” James Weldon Johnson Seminar, Seminole Community College, Sanford, Florida, April 1991; “Images of the Black Woman in Sarah Wright's This Child’s Gonna Live,” Annual Zora Neale Hurston Conference, June 1988; “’From a Well of Gloom Deep Within’: Waters Turpin and the WPA,” Seventh Annual Conference of the Middle-Atlantic Writers Association, Inc,. Baltimore, Maryland, October 1986; “’In the Midst of War, Trying for Peace’: Images of the Black Male and Female in Sarah Wright’s This Child’s Gonna Live,” Forty-Sixth Annual Convention of the College Language Association, Norfolk, Virginia, 1986; “Black Female Fugitives in the Fiction of Sarah Wright and Waters Turpin,” Annual Conference of the College Language Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1983; “The Race and the Runner: Black Female Fugitives in the Fiction of Sarah Wright and Waters Turpin,” Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Afro-American-Life and History, Baltimore, Maryland, November 1982
Subjects of public lectures/ prepared to make authoritative statements regarding: The Maryland Eastern Shore Experience in the Novels of Waters E. Turpin; A Genesis for the Afro-American Family Chronicle in the Works of Waters Edward Turpin; Black Female Fugitives in the Fiction of Sarah Wright and Waters Turpin; Black Matriarchy in Turpin’s Let the Day Perish and “Long Way Home”; “Rural Thesis v. Urban Antithesis in Toomer’s Cane,” “Images of the Black Male and Female in Sarah Wright’s This Child’s Gonna Live: James Weldon Johnson and the Mythopoeia of the Harlem Renaissance; Modern Intellectuals in the Arts and Humanities and the Mythopoeic Imperative; Exorcising Minority Ex-centricity in American Education; Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: The African-American Writer and the Western Literary Experience; Waters Edward Turpin and Sarah Elizabeth Wright; Black writers from Maryland’s Eastern Shore; Freedom and Rebellion in African-American Literature; Freedom and Rebellion in the American Renaissance; The Harlem Renaissance; The American Renaissance Compared to the Harlem Renaissance; Images of African Americans in Situation Comedies
Awards: Excellence in Teaching Award, The Johns Hopkins University, 1994-1995; Departmental Chairperson of the Year, Morgan State University, 1983-1984; Morgan State University Faculty Research Grant, 1982-83, 1983-84, 1984-85; National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellow, 1981; Ford Foundation (National) Fellow, 1978-79; William Fontaine Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, 1973-75; Southern Education Fellow, 1968; Fulbright Scholar to India, 1968; Woodrow Wilson Fellow, 1968.