Cheryl A. Wall Post-Doctoral Fellowships in African American and African Diaspora Literature
Since 2008, Rutgers has been proud to sponsor the Cheryl A. Wall Post-Doctoral Fellows Program. The purpose of the Wall fellowships is to encourage path-breaking scholarship in the field of black literary and cultural studies and provide mentors for students in the Rutgers Literatures in English Ph.D. program. The fellowships are designed to support assistant professors who are completing the required book for tenure, as well as newly minted PhDs preparing to enter the increasingly competitive and ever-shrinking academic job market.
Over the course of the program’s highly successful and productive run, thirteen fellows have earned tenure, and ten have published scholarly books (several of which have won major book prizes); one has also published a prize-winning collection of short stories and a novel. Many fellows have also subsequently garnered additional prestigious fellowships, including an ACLS Burkhardt, a National Humanities Center Fellowship, and two Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowships. At least six of the former fellows are now considered mid-career or senior level highly prominent leaders in African American and/or African Diaspora literary study.
The Rutgers Fellowships are now widely known and highly respected among scholars in African American and African Diaspora literary study. They complement and extend the reputation that Rutgers English has achieved for its excellence in these fields.
Current Fellow:
Bryant Brown, Jr., Ph.D. Brown University, American Studies
Past Fellows:
| 2024-2025 | Sasha Panaram, Fordham University, Assistant Professor https://www.fordham.edu/academics/departments/english/faculty/sasha-ann-panaram/ |
| 2023-2024 | Alex Alston, Bryn Mawr College, Assistant Professor https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/people/alex-alston |
| 2022-2023 | Victor Peterson II, The Cooper Union, Assistant Professor https://cooper.edu/academics/people/victor-peterson-ii LaToya Scott, Sam Houston State University, Assistant professor |
| 2021-2022 | Ashley Clemmons, California Polytechnic State University, Assistant Professor https://cla.calpoly.edu/class-acts-ashley-clemons Haylee Harrell, University of Houston, Assistant Professor https://uh.edu/class/english/people/faculty/haylee-harrell/ |
| 2020-2021 | Gabrielle Williams, The New School, Assistant Professor https://www.newschool.edu/lang/faculty/gabrielle-williams/ Randi Gill-Sadler, Davidson College, Assistant Professor https://www.davidson.edu/people/randi-gill-sadler |
| 2019-2020 | Paul Edwards, New York University, Assistant Professor https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/paul-edwards.html Rachel Carroll, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ACLC Emerging Voices Fellow For Pleasure: Race, Experimentalism, and Aesthetics (New York University Press, 2023) |
| 2018-2019 | Melanie Hill, Rutgers University, Newark, Assistant Professor https://sasn.rutgers.edu/melanie-r-hill Anna Hinton, University of North Texas, Assistant Professor https://english.unt.edu/people/anna-hinton-phd |
| 2017-2018 | Brian Baaki, University of Memphis, Visiting Lecturer Laura Vrana, University of South Alabama, Associate Professor https://www.southalabama.edu/colleges/artsandsci/english/faculty/vrana.html |
| 2016-2017 | Irvin Hunt, University of Illinois, Associate Professor Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement (UNC Press, 2022) Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship https://english.illinois.edu/directory/profile/ijh Sami Schalk, University of Wisconsin, Associate Professor Bodies Reimagined: (Dis)Ability, Race and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction (Duke University Press, 2018) https://gws.wisc.edu/staff/schalk-sami/ |
| 2015-2016 | Tara Bynum, University of Iowa, Associate Professor Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America (University of Illinois Press, 2023) https://english.uiowa.edu/people/tara-bynum Autumn Womack, Princeton University, Associate Professor The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880- 1930 (The University of Chicago Press, 2022) https://english.princeton.edu/people/autumn-womack |
| 2014-2015 | Alex Black, Hobart and Smith College, Associate Professor https://www.hws.edu/faculty/black-alex.aspx#overview Emma Garrett, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Lecturer |
| 2013-2014 | Shaundra Myers, University of Pittsburgh, Assistant Professor Former Faculty Fellow, Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern University https://www.english.pitt.edu/people/shaun-myers Mecca J. Sullivan, Georgetown University, Professor Blue Talk and Love, Stories, (Riverhead, 2015) The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2021) Big Girl (W.W. Norton, 2023) Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Fellow https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/0031Q00002XGKx2QAH/mecca-sullivan |
| 2012-2013 | Maleda Belilgne, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Asst. Professor Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, 2018-2019 Tayana Hardin, University of Denver, Associate Professor |
| 2011-2012 | Dennis Childs, University of California-San Diego, Associate Professor Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) https://literature.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/dchilds.html Patricia Lespinasse, (Adelphi University, Associate Professor) The Drum Is a Wild Woman: Jazz and Gender in African Diaspora Literature (University of Mississippi Press, 2022) |
| 2010-2011 | Shirley Moody-Turner, Pennsylvania State University, Associate Professor Editor, Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon (Indiana University Press 2013) Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation (University of Mississippi Press 2013) Editor, African American Literature in Transition: 1900-1910 (Cambridge University Press, 2021) Editor, The Portable Anna Julia Cooper (Penguin 2022) https://english.la.psu.edu/directory/scm18/ |
| 2009-2010 | Sade Alao, Atlanta Regional Commission (non-academic position) Courtney Thorsson, University of Oregon, Professor Women’s Work: Nationalism and Contemporary Black Women’s Fiction (2013) The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture, (Columbia University Press 2023). https://cas.uoregon.edu/directory/english/all/thorsson |
| 2008-2009 | Eve Dunbar, Vassar College, Professor of English on the Jean Webster Chair Black Regions of the Imagination: African American Writers between the Nation the World (Temple University Press, 2012) Editor, African American Literature in Transition: 1930-1940 (Cambridge University Press 2022) ACLS Fellowship (2017-2018) W.E.B. Dubois Fellow at Harvard University's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research (2020-2021) https://www.vassar.edu/faculty/evdunbar Andreá Williams, Ohio State University, Associate Professor Dividing Lines: Class Anxiety and Post-Bellum Black Fiction (2013) National Humanities Center Fellowship, 2018-2019 https://english.osu.edu/people/williams.2941 |