KEITH E. BYERMAN

EDUCATION

TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS

Since my training is interdisciplinary, I have always preferred to work at the intersections of fields of study, especially literature and history, but also folklore and psychology. My primary teaching and research area has been African American literature and culture, but I also work in American Southern Studies and race studies. Consistent with my other "border-crossings," I do work on both canonical and non-canonical writers (William Faulkner and W.E.B. Du Bois, for example) and both traditional and modernist/postmodernist expressive forms. I also serve as associate editor of African American Review.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

   Books:

• The Short Fiction of John Edgar Wideman. G.K. Hall. 1998.
• Seizing the Word: History, Art, and Self in the Work of W.E.B. Du Bois. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
• (With Erma Banks). Alice Walker: An Annotated Bibliography, 1968-1986. New York: Garland, 1989.
• Fingering the Jagged Grain: Tradition and Form in Recent Black Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986.

   Articles/Book Chapters:

• "Bloodlines: Creoles of Color and identity in the Fiction of Ernest Gaines." Songs of the New South: Writing Contemporary Louisiana. Ed. Suzanne Disheroon Green and Lisa Abney. Westport, CN: Greenwood, 2001. 193-201.
• "Gender and Justice: Alice Walker and the Sexual Politics of Civil Rights." The World Is Our Home: Society and Culture in Contemporary Southern Literature. Ed. Jeffrey J. Folks and Nancy Summers Folks. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2000. 93-106.
• "Angularity: An Interview with Leon Forrest." African American Review 33.3(1999): 439-450.
• "Black Voices, White Stories: An Intertextual Analysis of Thomas Nelson Page and Charles Chesnutt." North Carolina Literary Review 8(1999): 98-105.
• "Is There Race in This Writing? African American Fiction Today." American Book Review 21.1(1999): 1.
• "Songs of the Ancestors: Family in Song of Solomon." Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Toni Morrison. Ed. Nellie Y. McKay and Kathryn Earle. New York: MLA, 1997. 135-140.
• "The Flesh Made Word: Family Narrative in Two Wings to Veil My Face." Leon Forrest: Introductions and Interpretations. Ed. John Cawelti. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State UP, 1997. 199-215.
• "Untold Stories: Black Daughters in Absalom, Absalom and The Bluest Eye." Unflinching Gaze: Morrison and Faulkner Re-Envisioned. Ed. Carol A. Kolmerton, Stephen M. Ross, and Judith Bryant Wittenberg. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1997.
• "Hip-Hop Spirituality: African-American Cultural Criticism." Review essay. College Literature 22.2 (May 1995):134-142.
• "Anger in a Small Place: Jamaica Kincaid's Cultural Critique of Antigua." College Literature 22.1 (February 1995): 91-102.
• "A 'Slow-to-Anger' People: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman as Historical Fiction." Critical Reflections on the Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines. Ed. David C. Estes. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994. 107-123.
• "'The Children Ceased to Hear My Name': Recovering the Self in The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois." Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives. Ed. James Robert Payne. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. 64-93.
• "Race and Romance: The Quest of the Silver Fleece as Utopian Narrative." American Literary Realism 24.3 (1992): 58-71.
• "Gender, Culture and Identity in Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones." Redefining Autobiography in Twentieth-Century Women's Fiction. Ed. Janice Morgan and Colette T. Hall. New York: Garland, 1991. 135-47.
• "Re-membering History in Contemporary Black Literature and Criticism." American Literary History 3.4 (1991): 809-16.
• "Desire and Alice Walker: The Quest for a Womanist Narrative." Callaloo 12 (1989): 321-31.
• "'Dear Everything'": Alice Walker's The Color Purple as Womanist Utopia." Utopian Thought in American Literature. Ed. Arno Heller, Walter Holbling, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. Tubingen: Gunter Narr, 1988. 171-83.
• "Healing Arts: Folklore and the Female Self in Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters." Postscript 5 (1988): 37-43.
• "We Wear the Mask: Deceit as Theme and Style in Slave Narratives." The Art of Slave Narrative. Ed. Darwin Turner and John Sekora. Macomb: Western Illinois University Press, 1982.
• "Intense Behaviors: The Use of the Grotesque in Eva's Man and The Bluest Eye." CLA Journal 25 (1982): 447-57.
• "Words and Music: Narrative Ambiguity in James Baldwin's 'Sonny's Blues.'" Studies in Short Fiction 19 (1982): 367-72.
• "Hearts of Darkness: Narrative Voices in The Souls of Black Folk." American Literary Realism 14 (1981): 43-51.
• "Black Vortex: The Gothic Structure of Eva's Man." MELUS 7 (1980): 93-100.

IN PROGRESS

   Books:

• Ed. Reflections: Critical Essays on Carson McCullers.
• "True and Ancient Properties": History in Contemporary African-American Narrative.

INVITED LECTURES/PRESENTATIONS, 1989-2001:

• "Raymond Adrews and the Construction of Black Masculinity." American Literature Association, Cambridge, MA. 26 May 2001.
• "Beloved, Mama Day, and the Problematics of Motherhood." College Language Association, New Orleans. 21 April 2001.
• "Unmaking Trauma: Beloved as Novel and Film." North East MLA, Hartford. 30 March 2001.
• "Re-Membering the Past: History and Trauma in Contemporary African American Narrative." University of Notre Dame. 23 February 2001.
• "The Color of Freedom: Existentialism and Race in Richard Wright's Eight Men." MLA, Washington. 28 December 2000.
• "Apocalyptic Visions and False Prophets: The End(s) of History in Morrison, Wideman, and Johnson." African American Literature and Culture Society, Salt Lake City. 28 October 2000.
• "(Re)-Centering the Self: Marginality, Nationality, and Identity in The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois." Autobiography and Changing Identities Conference, University of British Columbia. 29 July 2000.
• "The Art and Imagination of Margaret Walker." Margaret Walker Symposium, Jackson, MS. 7 July 2000.
• "Daughter as Outlaw: The Law of the Father in The member of the Wedding." American Literature Association, Long Beach, CA. 28 May 2000.
• "Race and the Boundaries of Writing: John Edgar Wideman s Postmodern Fictions." College Language Association, Baltimore. 7 April 2000.
• "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Construction of Whiteness in The Souls of Black Folk." South Atlantic MLA, Atlanta. 4 November 1999.
• "The Rawness of Time: Violence and Voice in the Poetry of Gayl Jones." Pan-African Conference, Terre Haute, IN. 10 April 1999.
• "Discomfiting the Comfortable: Toni Morrison and the Shaping of American Literary Culture." Invited Lecture. Purdue University Black Studies Symposium. 1 April 1999.
• "Beloved: A Woman's View of Slavery." Invited Lecture. University of Michigan- Dearborn. 16 February 1999.
• "Burying the Dead: The Pain of Memory in Toni Morrison's Beloved." Invited Lecture. University of Michigan-Dearborn. 15 February 1999.
• "Gender and Justice: Sexual Politics and Civil Rights in the Fiction of Alice Walker." South Atlantic MLA, Atlanta. 6 November 1998.
• "Quiet As It's Kept: Jazz as Cultural Critique." Invited Lecture. University of Utah, Salt Lake City. 10 March 1998.
• "The Trauma of History: Uses of the Past in Contemporary African American Narrative." South Atlantic MLA, Atlanta. 14 November 1997.
• "Teaching Race in the White University." National Conference on Whiteness and Racism. Cambridge, MA. 7 November 1997.
• "History/HisStory: Constructing the Black Male Grand Narrative." American Literature Association. 23 May 1997.
• "America's Passed Time: Race and Baseball in August Wilson's Fences." Baseball in Literature and Culture, Terre Haute. 18 April 1997.
• "Art and Propaganda: Aesthetic Theory in the Harlem Renaissance." Pan African Studies Conference, Terre Haute. 11 April 1997.
• "Black Voices, White Stories: An Intertextual Reading of Page and Chesnutt." SAMLA, Savannah. 10 November 1996.
• "Untold Stories: Black Daughters in Absalom, Absalom! and The Bluest Eye." American Literature Association, San Diego. 1 June 1996.
• "W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington After 100 Years." Cotton Exposition Centennial Lecture, Atlanta History Center, Atlanta. 24 October 1995.
• "Jazz: Toni Morrison's Rewriting of the Harlem Renaissance." Toni Morrison Conference, Louisville. 6 April 1995.
• "Big Easy in L.A.: Race in the Detective Fiction of Walter Mosley." Popular Culture Association, Chicago. 7 April 1994.
• "Daughters of Yoknapatawpha: Patriarchy and Women Characters in Absalom, Absalom!" Twentieth Century Literature Conference, Louisville. 14 February 1994
• "Black Writers and Southern Tradition: 'A Home in that Rock.'" South Atlantic MLA, Atlanta. 4 November 1993.
• "Big City Blues: Toni Morrison's Jazz." Popular Culture Association, New Orleans. 10 April 1993.
• "Anger in a Small Place: Jamaica Kincaid's Critique of Antigua." South Atlantic MLA, Knoxville. 12 November 1992.
• "The Kenyatta Novels of Donald Goines." Popular Culture Association, Louisville. 20 March 1992.
• "Image and Ideology: Documentary Photography and Southern Literary Artists." South Atlantic MLA, Atlanta. 16 November 1991.
• "Life Story as Cultural Critique: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois." South Atlantic MLA, Atlanta. 15 November 1991.
• "The Complex Fate of the Black Southern Writer." Charleston Writers Conference, Charleston, SC. 8 April 1990.
• "'Just Like Slavery Times': Bloods and Afro-American Culture." American Culture Association, Toronto. 8 March 1990.
• "Desire and Alice Walker: A Lacanian Reading." Popular Culture Association, St. Louis. 6 April 1989.
• "Mutually Assured Destruction: Ethnicity and Apocalypse in Bernard Malamud's The Tenants." Twentieth Century Literature Conference, Louisville. 23 February 1989.