When I was in graduate school, whenever a black woman scholar presented her work a peculiar phenomenon emerged: peers always and only remarked on the speaker’s person, rather than on her ideas. At ...
Nicole A. Spigner
Nicole A. Spigner is an assistant professor of African American literature and culture in the English and Creative Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago. Her book project “Niobe Repeating: Black New Women’s Literature and Ovidian Transformation” explores how, through Ovidian allusions, themes, and forms, 19th-century African American women writers redefined literary convention, gender configurations, and racial identity, giving rise to a new genre of “Black New Women” classicist fiction. (Author photograph by Phil Dembinski) 