Stephanie Dunson

Assistant Professor of English

PhD University of Massachusetts, Amherst
MA University of Massachusetts, Amherst
BA Ohio University

Office: 308C Independence Hall
Phone: 401-874-4671
E-Mail: sdunson@mail.uri.edu
Office Hours: Tue 12:30 - 1:30 pm and by appt.

As a scholar of African-American literature who situates herself within the larger discipline of American Studies, Professor Dunson cultivates a broad range of interests, including art history, music history, nineteenth-century American literature, gender studies, material culture studies, ethnic studies, and popular culture studies. Her primary literary interest is in slave literature; her critical focus is to examine means by which each generation of American writers gives voice to the unarticulated trauma of early slave narratives. Her accompanying interest in exploring non-literary ways black people in America have given voice to their experiences (through art, artifact, motion, music, etc.) has led her to the broad interdisciplinarity afforded in American Studies. In her work, she is drawn to odd-angled questions, unexplored connections, and surprising relationships because she believes that to explore the full richness and diversity of African-American culture and history requires no less. Her most recent project has been to study the cover illustrations, lyrics, and melodies of sheet music from the blackface minstrel tradition to gain insight into the racial attitudes of middle-class women in nineteenth-century America.

In addition to her work at UMass and Ohio University, she has taught in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Wesleyan University and the Center for Academic Development at Smith College; she has served as Director of the Writing Center at Mount Holyoke College and is a faculty consultant for the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College. While at UMass, she received funding from a special Mellon Foundation Grant to research current methods in African-American Studies and was also awarded a Minority Dissertation Fellowship by the Ford Foundation and National Academies.