Laura
Quinn
149 Old Ash Road
Mercer, PA 16137
Phone: 724-748-3609 (home)
814-332-4329 (work)
Education
Ph.D (English) University of Minnesota, August 1981 B.A. (English) University of Minnesota, August 1969
Dissertation:
Parallel Narratives and Multiple Narratives in the Novels of Anthony Trollope
directed by William A. Madden
Present Position
Professor of English, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA
1989-present; African American literature and Women's Studies;
Coordinator, Black Studies Minor
Prior
Teaching Experience
Assistant Professor, English, University of Wisconsin-River Falls, 1981-83
Academic Staff, 1983-88 Tenure Track, 1988-89 Tenured Associate
Teaching Assistant, English, University of Minnesota, 1970-71; Teaching Associate, 1971-77
Professional Activities and Awards
Awarded the Frederick R. Seely Endowed Chair in English, January 2001
Fulbright Visiting Professor at University of Fort Hare in South Africa, Jan.-Dec. 2000
National Endowment for the Humanities six-week Summer Seminar at University of Kansas, 1991, with William L. Andrews on Slave Narrative and Contemporary Novelizations of the Slave Experience.
College-wide Thoburn Prize for Innovative Teaching, Allegheny College, 1997
Pelletier Award for Contribution to African-American Studies, Allegheny College, 1990, given by the Black Student Association.
National Endowment for the Humanities eight-week summer seminar at Barnard College, summer 1987, with Nancy K. Miller on Feminist Theory and Women's Writing
Lilly Foundation Teaching Development Grant, May, 1985 to May 1986 for Freshman English Collaborative Learning Groups Project. Attended and presented at National Lilly Fellow Conferences in Georgia and Indiana in addition to monthly conferences at Wisconsin state system colleges.
Publications
"Trifles
as Treason: Coming to Consciousness as Gendered Readers" included
in
Reader Response in the Classroom: Evoking and Interpreting Meaning in
Literature ed. Nicholas Karolides: Longman, November 1991. Second Edition,
Lawrence, Erlbaum Associates, London, 2000
"
Moby Dick Meets Big Nurse: A Feminist Defense of a Misogynist Text"
included in Censored Books: Critical Viewpoints Scarecrow, 1992
"Coming
from Behind: Women's Studies at University of Wisconsin-River
Falls" included in Volume 4 of University Women, University of Wisconsin
Press, 1992
"Victorian
Popular Fiction: Penny Dreadfuls, Boys' Weeklies, and Halfpenny
Parts." Chapbook commissioned for the exhibition The Art and Mind
of
Victorian England, held at University of Minnesota in 1974; funded by
the
National Endowment for the Humanities
Entries on Zora Neale Hurston, Bell Hooks, Henry Louis
Gates, Jr. and Hazel Carby for The Dictionary of Feminist
Literary Theory. Garland Press. 1996
"Native
Son as Project," in Teaching Approaches to Native Son ed. James
Miller. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1997 (in The
MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series)
"'What
is Going On Here?': Baldwin's Another Country." in Gay and Lesbian
Literature Since World War II, edited Sonya Jones. New York: Haworth Press,
1998
"'Melodramatic
Maybe, It Seems to Me Now": Langston Hughes and the
Underwritten Self." in A Sea of Stories: The Shaping Power of Narrative
in
Gay and Lesbian Cultures, edited Sonya Jones. New , edited Sonya Jones.
New
York: Haworth Press, 2000
"The
Politics of Law and Order," in Journal of American and
Comparative Culture, 2003
"The
Mouse Will Play: The Parodic in Walter Mosley's Fiction" accepted
for
inclusion in anthology of critical articles on Mosley to be published
by
University of Mississippi Press
In Progress
The Novels of Ann Petry and the High Cold War (book length study that
situates Petry's work in dialogue with that of Wright, Ellison, in an
early Cold War context)
Reviews
A
Political Companion to American Film in Film Criticism, Fall 1996
Post-Negritude Visual and Literary Culture in Film Criticism, Winter,
1997-8
Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video in Film Criticism,
Fall, 1999
Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era by Jane M. Gaines
in Film Criticism, Fall, 2001
Literary Adaptations in Black American Cinema from Micheaux to Morrison
by Barbara Tema Lupack in Film Criticism, 2002
Writing Himself Into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His
Audience by Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence, in Film Criticism, 2003
Returning the Gaze:A genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909-1949 by
Anna Everett, in Film Criticism, Winter 2004-5
Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity by Jacqueline
Najuma Stewart in Film Criticism, Spring, 2005
Review of Critical Essays on Frederick Douglass, ed. William L. Andrews in a/b Auto/ Biography Studies, Spring 1995
Review of The World of Toni Morrison ed. Audrey L. Vinson and Bessie W.
Jones in the Wisconsin English Journal, Spring 1987
Review of Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and
Popular Literature and Images of Women in American Popular Culture
ed. Angela G. Dorenkamp in the Wisconsin English Journal, April, 1986
Review of The Ethnic American Woman: Problems, Protests, Lifestyle ed.
Edith Blicksilver in theWisconsin English Journal, Spring, 1984
Selected Presentations
"Narrative as Repudiation: Ann Petry's The Street and Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma presented at International Narrative Conference, Ottawa, April 2006
"Ann Petry's Cold War Lynching Novel: Race and Deradicalization" delivered at National Association of African American Studies Conference, Baton Rouge, February, 2006
"Narrow and Marrows: The Repudiation of Regionalism in Ann Petry's Fiction" presented at International Narrative Conference, University of Kentucky, Louisville, April 2005
"Ironizing the Discourses of Violence: Nadine Gordimer's Post-Apartheid Novels" presented at the Symposium on Geopolitical Violence and Literature, University of Oregon, February 26 , 2005
"The Mouse Will Play: Stylization in Walter Moseley's Fiction" delivered at NEMLA, Boston, March 2003
"Ann Petry's Cold War Lynching Novel" presented at Conference on Race and Racism in Film and Literature, West Virginia University, Morgantown, October, 2002
"A
Case Study in the Ethics of Fiction: Gordimer's None to Accompany Me and
Coetzee's
Disgrace as Post-Apartheid Fictions" presented at the International
Narrative Conference, East Lansing, April 11-14, 2002
"The
Post-Apartheid Novels of Nadine Gordimer," guest lecture delivered
at University of
Vermont, April 4, 2002
"The
Politics of Law and Order" presented at the Popular Culture Conference,
Toronto,
March 13-17, 2002
"Interdisciplinarity
as an Outreach Strategy" delivered at Association of University English
Teachers of South Africa, Bloemfontein, April 2000
"Up
From Anti-Communism: Langston Hughes's Second Autobiography" delivered
at
International Narrative Conference, Gainsville, Florida, April 1997
"Pittsburgh in Black Fiction: John Henry in the Iron City" delivered at American Studies Association Conference in November, 1995 in Pittsburgh and in the Humanities Lecture Series at Allegheny on May 1, 1995
"The Mother of All Invention: Ann Petry's 'Mother Africa' and the Treachery of Art" at American Studies Association National Conference, Nashville, Tennessee, October 1994
"To Tell a Determined Story: Black Naturalist Narrative Revisited" at International Narrative Conference, Vancouver, Canada, April, 1994
"'Melodramatic Maybe It Seems to Me Now: Langston Hughes's The Big Sea' at International Narrative Conference, Albany, New York, April, 1993
"The
Invisible Man in Thelma and Louise," presented in session on feminist
film theory at
Southeast Regional Women's Studies Conference, University of South Florida,
March, 1992 and at International Narrative Conference, Vanderbilt University
on April, 1992
"Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and the Congestion of Tradition" presented in Humanities Lecture Series at Allegheny in February, 1992
"Coming
to Consciousness as Gendered Readers: An Interactive Journal Project"
presented at
NCTE, Seattle, November 22, 1991
"Political
Assumptions and Political Realities in a Collaborative Learning Model"
presented at
CCCC, Boston, 1991
"Women and Agency in Marita Bonner's Frye Street and Environs" presented at MLA, 1990, Chicago, in a session on the Black Chicago Renaissance
"Changing the Charge: Three Decades of Commencement Addresses at Smith College" presented at National Women's Studies Association Conference, June, 1990, University of Akron.
"Dwelling in Possibility: Nuruddin Farah's Maps as a Narrative of Liminality" presented at Narrative: An International Conference, April, 1990, New Orleans, Tulane University.
"I Had Been Hungry All the Years: Emily Dickinson's Gendered Class" presented at the National Women's Studies Association Conference, June, 1988, Minneapolis.
University
Service
· Member of Trustee Diversity Task Force, 2005--
· Elected to Faculty Review Committee, January 2006
· Director of Black Studies Minor since 1998
· Director of Women's Studies Program, 1995-96; member of
Women's Studies Steering Committee 1993-2000
· Current member of Finance and Facilities Committee (second consecutive
term)
· Elected to Faculty Council, 1997-99
· Member of CORIS now CODIS (Committee on Racial Issues) since
1989
· University Curriculum Committee, 1994-1997
· Fall Honors Convocation Committee, 1992-94
· Co-chair, Racial Harassment Task Force, Allegheny College 1992-93
· Faculty Advisor to SAGE, Student Women's Organization, 1990-92
· Faculty Senator, University of Wisconsin-River Falls, 1985-1988
· President, Local Chapter TAUWP, The Association of University
of Wisconsin Professionals, 1986-88
· Chair, Women's Studies Program and Coordinator of Minor, University
of Wisconsin-River Falls, 19841988; also faculty supervisor of the Women's
Resource Center
References:
· Professor Ben Slote, Chair, Department of English, Allegheny
College, Meadville, PA 16335 (814-332-4343)
· Professor Lloyd Michaels, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA 16335
(814-332-3393)
· Professor Nick Karolides, English Department and Associate Dean
of Arts and Sciences, University of Wisconsin-River Falls, River Falls,
WI 54022 (715-425-3366)
