Shelby Crosby

Associate Professor, Coordinator of African American Literature

Phone

901.678.4583

Email

scrosby1@memphis.edu

Fax

901.678.2226

Office

Patterson 423

Office Hours

Call for Hours

Education

B.A., 1997, Morehead State University
M.A., 2002, State University of New York at Buffalo
Ph.D., 2007, State University of New York at Buffalo

Academic Summary

Dr. Crosby's research spans mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century African American literature, representations of womanhood (particularly black womanhood), and critical race theory. It threads together critical race, black feminism, and literary historical frameworks to interrogate an American national story. Dr. Crosby is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the pervasive derogatory ideologies of black womanhood. Using black feminist theory to ground the text, she will examine such authors as Frederick Douglass, Williams Wells Brown, and Martin Delany, arguing that, through their adoption of traditional demarcations of white womanhood, black women are further pushed to the margins of American society.

Select Publications

• Crosby, Shelby and Terrence Tucker. "Afrofuturism: Past, Present, and Beyond." Special issue of CLA Journal 65.1. (March 2022. 
• "Trying to Understand: A Daughter's Prayer." The Feminist Wire. 19 March 2014. Web.
• "Black Womanhood and Reiteration in Paul Laurence Dunbar's The Sport of the Gods." CEAMAGazine: A Journal of the College English Association. March 2014.
• "Black Girlhood Interrupted: Race, Gender, and Colonization in Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber." Contemporary Speculative Fiction. Ed. M. Keith Booker. Massachusetts: Salem Press, 2013. 187-203.
• "Conservative or a Visionary: The Journalistic Career of Zora Neale Hurston." Critical Insights: Zora Neale Hurston. Ed. Sharon Jones. Massachusetts: Salem Press, 2013. 209-229.
• "Melville's Democratic America." Critical Insights: Herman Melville. Ed. Eric Link. Massachusetts: Salem Press, 2013. 163-179.
• "Complicating Blackness: The Politics and Journalism of Zora Neale Hurston." Zora Neale Hurston: an Annotated Bibliography of Works of Criticism. Eds. Verner Mitchell & Cynthia Davis. New York: Scarecrow Press, 2013. 109-117.
• "Language of Empowerment: My Love of Black Feminism," Black Feminism Journal, May 2012
• "The Body Politic and Cultural Miscegenation in Hope Leslie or, Early Times in the Massachusetts" CLA Journal, December 2011.
• "The Social Consciousness of Melville" accepted in Critical Insights: Herman Melville. Fall 2011