'Black Classicism': some theories, some practice and some dilemmas
MLK Lecture: Tessa Roynon, University of Oxford
Tessa Roynon is a Research and Teaching Fellow at the RAI. She is a specialist in modern American literature, in Anglophone literature of the African diaspora, in Classical Reception studies, and in the interactions between all of these.
She is currently working on two book projects. The first examines the ways in which American novelists ranging from Willa Cather and William Faulkner to Ralph Ellison, Toni Cade Bambara and Marilynne Robinson engage ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman traditions in their representations of racial and/or ethnic politics and identities. Her second project is a study of the intellectual formation of Ralph Ellison.
Tessa completed her first degree at Clare College, Cambridge, her Master's at Georgetown University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and her AHRC-funded doctorate (awarded in 2007) at the University of Warwick. She was a Research Fellow and Lecturer in English at St Peter's College, Oxford from 2008 to 2014 and a Lecturer at Merton College, Oxford in 2014-15.
Her first monograph, Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition (OUP 2013) was included in the University of Oxford English Faculty's REF submission (2014) and won the Toni Morrison Society Book Prize for the best single-authored work on Morrison published between 2012 and 2015. Tessa is also the author of The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison (CUP 2012), contributing co-editor of the acclaimed interdisciplinary essay collection, African Athena: New Agendas (ed. Orrells, Roynon and Bhambra, OUP 2011), and has published numerous articles and book chapters on Morrison.
In September 2016 Tessa delivered the Toni Morrison Society Annual Lecture at Oberlin College, Ohio and in March 2017 she will lecture on ‘Black Classicism: some theories, some practice, some dilemmas’ at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In January 2016, Tessa took part in a discussion of the radio adaptation of Beloved and contemporary black women’s writing on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
Her forthcoming publications include articles on engagement with the classical tradition in Marlene NoubeSe Philip, Bernardine Evaristo and Robin Coste Lewis; and a biographical essay on Ralph Ellison between the years of 1936 and 1942. Tessa is also co-editing, with Daniel Orrells (Classics, Kings College London), a special issue of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition on the theme of ‘Ovid and Identity in the 21st Century’. She is co-writing an essay for this collection on the engagement with Ovid in Doctorow's Ragtime and Eugenides's Middlesex.
At TORCH (the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities), Tessa is currently co-ordinator of the Race and Resistance Research Programme, for which she also serves as founding editor of the blog, ‘Voices Across Borders’. She is executive editor of the new book series at Peter Lang that is affiliated with the TORCH programme: Race and Resistance Across Borders in the Long Twentieth Century.Tessa is also a co-founder of the Fiction and Human Rights Network at TORCH, which she currently convenes with Jonathan Herring (Law, Oxford).
Tessa is a member of the Corpus Christi Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity and an editorial advisory board member of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition. She is a mentor in the Fulbright 1:1 Programme, in partnership with the Sutton Trust. She also leads a creative writing club at a local primary school; the club publishes an annual literary magazine, Write Away.
She is currently working on two book projects. The first examines the ways in which American novelists ranging from Willa Cather and William Faulkner to Ralph Ellison, Toni Cade Bambara and Marilynne Robinson engage ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman traditions in their representations of racial and/or ethnic politics and identities. Her second project is a study of the intellectual formation of Ralph Ellison.
Tessa completed her first degree at Clare College, Cambridge, her Master's at Georgetown University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and her AHRC-funded doctorate (awarded in 2007) at the University of Warwick. She was a Research Fellow and Lecturer in English at St Peter's College, Oxford from 2008 to 2014 and a Lecturer at Merton College, Oxford in 2014-15.
Her first monograph, Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition (OUP 2013) was included in the University of Oxford English Faculty's REF submission (2014) and won the Toni Morrison Society Book Prize for the best single-authored work on Morrison published between 2012 and 2015. Tessa is also the author of The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison (CUP 2012), contributing co-editor of the acclaimed interdisciplinary essay collection, African Athena: New Agendas (ed. Orrells, Roynon and Bhambra, OUP 2011), and has published numerous articles and book chapters on Morrison.
In September 2016 Tessa delivered the Toni Morrison Society Annual Lecture at Oberlin College, Ohio and in March 2017 she will lecture on ‘Black Classicism: some theories, some practice, some dilemmas’ at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In January 2016, Tessa took part in a discussion of the radio adaptation of Beloved and contemporary black women’s writing on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
Her forthcoming publications include articles on engagement with the classical tradition in Marlene NoubeSe Philip, Bernardine Evaristo and Robin Coste Lewis; and a biographical essay on Ralph Ellison between the years of 1936 and 1942. Tessa is also co-editing, with Daniel Orrells (Classics, Kings College London), a special issue of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition on the theme of ‘Ovid and Identity in the 21st Century’. She is co-writing an essay for this collection on the engagement with Ovid in Doctorow's Ragtime and Eugenides's Middlesex.
At TORCH (the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities), Tessa is currently co-ordinator of the Race and Resistance Research Programme, for which she also serves as founding editor of the blog, ‘Voices Across Borders’. She is executive editor of the new book series at Peter Lang that is affiliated with the TORCH programme: Race and Resistance Across Borders in the Long Twentieth Century.Tessa is also a co-founder of the Fiction and Human Rights Network at TORCH, which she currently convenes with Jonathan Herring (Law, Oxford).
Tessa is a member of the Corpus Christi Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity and an editorial advisory board member of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition. She is a mentor in the Fulbright 1:1 Programme, in partnership with the Sutton Trust. She also leads a creative writing club at a local primary school; the club publishes an annual literary magazine, Write Away.
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