

“Fiction is of great value to any people as a preserver of manners and customs— religious, political and social… It is a record of growth and development from generation to generation.”
Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces, 1900
SELECTED SERVICE
2024 – present Dean’s Advisory Board, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
2023– present Inductee Selection Committee, North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame
2023– present Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
2021 – 2023 Frederick Douglass Day Committee, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
2022 – 2024 Podcast Subcommittee, C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
2021 – 2022 Black Ecologies Week Committee, UT Humanities Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
2020 – 2022 Vice President and Program Committee Chair, Langston Hughes Society
2020 – 2022 Membership Committee, C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
2019 – 2022 Delegate Assembly, Modern Language Association
2017 – 2020 Dean’s Cabinet, College of Arts & Humanities, University of Maryland, College Park
2014 – 2020 Black Graduate Student Union, University of Maryland, College Park, (Vice President, 2014-2016)
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
Langston Hughes Society (Life Member)
MELUS: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
Modern Language Association
Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
Society of Early Americanists
Western History Association
The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing