Professor of American Studies, Emerita
Writing about your book in The New Yorker magazine in 2016, poet Ben Lerner called it “a powerful challenge to conventional ways of thinking (or not thinking) about race and poetry.”
He pretty well summed up your career.
As a scholar, your groundbreaking work in the study of poetics, culture and history has been honored by America’s first and only nationwide conference on race and creative writing, which is named after your book, Thinking Its Presence.
As an academic leader, you have been credited by colleagues with doubling the number of American studies majors, making that program a hub of intellectual excitement.
As a teacher and mentor, you have inspired deep loyalty among students. Some of them joined you in working for the creation of a program in Asian American Studies. That program exists because you envisioned, planned and championed it over many years. Along the way, you co-taught a popular course that tackled tough questions about the college’s own history.
Throughout your life story—from a childhood in rural North Carolina, the daughter of immigrant parents, to your distinguished career as a global academic and intellectual—your close colleagues trace what one calls a “remarkable consistency of moral commitment.”
In the words of an admiring alumnus, “Through her mentorship, she has shown me what it means to be a humanitarian.”
I hereby declare you Professor of American Studies, Emerita, entitled to all the rights, honors and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 8, 2025