Robin Lucy

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Associate Professor

English Language and Literature

614E Pray Harrold

734.487.3174

[email protected]

Education

  • Ph.D., McMaster University
  • MA, University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica

Interests and Expertise

I received my Ph.D. in American Literature, with an emphasis on African American Literature, at McMaster University. My dissertation examined the representation of the African American folk, the use of folklore and the literary response to World War II in the writings of Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, Ann Petry and Richard Wright. My MA is from the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica where I studied the literatures of Africa and the African diaspora. 

My research interests include African American women’s writing and feminist theory, the African diaspora, folklore and folk culture, Caribbean literature and post-1945 African American writing. I am presently working on an extended study of African American writing of the 1950s and the recovery of Black literary and political radicalism during the Cold War era. 

Since 2007, I have coordinated EMU’s College-in-Prison Project at Huron Valley Correctional for Women in Ypsilanti. This program brings undergraduate classes to inmate students.

Courses

  • LITR 160 Introduction to African American Literature
  • LITR 362 Studies in African American Literature
  • LITR 450 Major Authors, Toni Morrison and John Edgar Wideman
  • LITR 526 African American Literature to 1945
  • LITR 527 African American Literature Post-1945
  • ENGL 300 Writing About Literature

Publications and Presentations

  • “‘Kulaks and Commissars and Robesons’: Ann Petry’s The Narrows and Cold War Radicalism.” Conference Presentation at the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention. Buffalo, New York. April 11, 2008.
  • “‘Flying Home’: Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and the Black Folk During World War II.” Journal of American Folklore 120.477 (2007): 257–83. 
  • “‘Fables of the Reconstruction’: Black Women on the Domestic Front in Ann Petry’s World War II Fiction.” College Language Association Journal 49.1 (2005): 1–27
  • “James Baldwin.” African American Dramatists: An A-To-Z Guide. Ed. Emanuel Nelson. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004. 7–16.