CATHERINE C. SAUNDERS
ca.saunders@ufl.edu | 347.528.8332
EDUCATION
Ph.D. African American Literature, Howard University
M.A. English and American Literature, Mills College
B.A. English Literature, Howard University
RESEARCH INTERESTS
20th & 21st Century African American Literature, African American Women Writers, Critical Race
Theory, Toni Morrison, Archive Studies, African American Culture and Culture Creation, Critical Gender Theory, Black Popular Culture, Speculative Fiction, Carceral Studies, Caribbean Literature, Black British Literature
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Assistant Professor of African American Literature and Media
University of Florida: Gainesville, Florida
Courses Taught: Survey of African American Literature, Black Diasporan Thought, The Negro Artist and Racial Mountain: Langston Hughes and the Black Poetic 100 Years Later, From Page to Picture: African American Literary Translation
Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana
Bates College: Lewiston, Maine
Courses Taught: Africana 100, The Writings of Toni Morrison, The Africana Novel as Theory, Survey of Literatures of the Caribbean, Narrating Slavery
Adjunct Lecturer, College of Liberal Arts
Morgan State University: Baltimore, Maryland Courses Taught: English 101, English 102
Teaching Fellow
Howard University: Washington, DC
Courses Taught: Freshman Seminar
Adjunct Professor, Institute for Writing Studies
St. John’s University: Queens, New York
Courses Taught: Composition and Rhetoric
Adjunct Professor, The Writing Program
Hofstra University: Garden City, NY
Courses Taught: Composition and Rhetoric
Part-time Lecturer: First-Year Writing Program
Rutgers University: New Brunswick, New Jersey
Courses Taught: Basic Composition- English 100, Expository Writing 101
Instructor, Department of English
Long Island Business Institute
Courses Taught: College English, The American Contemporary Short Story
Lecturer
The College of New Rochelle
Courses Taught: Critical Thought and Language, Literary Thought And Critical Analysis
Teaching Intern
Berkeley City College
Courses Taught: Research Writing and Critical Thought
Teaching Assistant (to Dr. Kirsten Saxton, Department of English)
Mills College
Course Taught: Intro to Literary Studies
PUBLICATIONS
Review of Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship by Dana A. Williams. Journal of Black Studies. 27 May 2026.
“Black Interiority, DEI, and Langston Hughes’ Racial Mountain.” The Langston Hughes Review. (Manuscript Submitted)
“The ‘Other’ Mother: Flesh, Filicide, and Toni Morrison’s Feminine Provocation.” Callaloo. (Manuscript Submitted)
“Profess*Her: The Revelatory Power of the Black Female Professor.” A Cross-Cultural Examination of
Women in Higher Education and the Workplace. IGI Global, 2024
“Suicide or Genocide? Policing the Womb and Killing the Carceral State.” Jump the Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media. No. 62, Winter 2023-24.
“Afrodemia: The Interior Essence of African American Literature as Manifested in the Historically Black Institution.” Teaching Humanities with Cultural Responsiveness at HBCUs and HSIs. IGI Global, 2023.
Kindred Spirits (Review). Studies in American Culture. Fall 2022.
Guest Editor. Race, Dystopia, and American Identity. The St. John’s University Humanities Review. April
2018. Print.
FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
Recipient, Humanities Scholarship Enhancement Fund ($11,000): University of Florida 2026
Finalist, Leading Edge Fellowship: ACLS Spring 2024
Recipient, Just Julian Fellowship ($24,000): Howard University 2022-2023
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Just Julian Fellow
The Graduate School, Howard University
Doctoral Fellow
Summer Writing Academy, Howard University
Project Assistant
Archives Collection, Williams College
Research Assistant (to Dr. Curdella Forbes)
Howard University, Department of English
Research Assistant (to Dr. Ajuan Mance)
Mills College, Department of English
OTHER EXPERIENCE
Writing Tutor, The Petey Greene Program DC Central Detention Facility, Washington, DC
Tutor, The Writing Center
Howard University
Writing Instructor
Johns Hopkins’s Center for Talent Youth
English Instructor
Oliver Scholars
CONFERENCES/PRESENTATIONS
Presenter. “African American Literature in a Nuanced Era of Anti-Blackness.” Modern Language Association. Los Angeles, California, Jan 7-11, 2027 (forthcoming).
Presenter. “Afrodemia and the Afterlife of Cinema: Ryan Coogler and the Black Film as Literature.” Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association. Seattle, Washington, Nov. 11-14, 2026 (forthcoming)
Presenter. “Are We Still Looking for Zora? Zora Neale Hurston and the Cultural Compass to Epistemology,” ZORA! Festival Academic Conference, Eatonville, FL, January 30,2026.
Presenter. “Black, White, and Brown: Gertrude Dorsey Brown and the Dissolving Color Line.” MLA Conference, Toronto, CA, January 10, 2026.
Presenter. “Dissenting from Disruption: The Neo Slave Narrative and Re-Claiming Black Cultural Inheritance.” CLA Conference, Vancouver, WA, April 23-26, 2025
Presenter. “Afrodemia: The Pedagogical Power of the African American Literary Landscape.” Howard Research Month Symposium, Washington, DC, April 27-28, 2023.
Presenter. “Afrodemia, An Interior Institution: Toni Morrison and the Pedagogical Power of the Black Literary Landscape” CLA Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, April 5-8, 2023.
Presenter. “Why Sorry to Bother You Is Not a Bother at All: Boots Riley and the Labyrinth of. Assimilation.” CLA Conference, Raleigh, North Carolina, April 12, 2019.
Presenter. “Escaping the Burning House: Linden Hills as a Literary Portrait of Black Power,” Graduate English Student Association Conference, Howard University, March 31, 2019.
Presenter. “Georgia Douglas Johnson and Eva B. Dykes: An Integrative Archive of the American-African in 20th Century America” Howard University Research Week, Howard University, April 11, 2019.
Presenter. “Not Your Story to Tell: Seizing The Black Narrative” The St. John’s University English Conference, St. John’s University, April 7, 2018.
Presenter. “The Resurrection of the Tragic Black Heroine: A Discussion of Contemporary Mistresses on Prime-Time Television” SAMLA Conference, Nov. 4-6, 2016.
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
Member, Toni Morrison Society
Member, Modern Language Association (MLA)
Catherine C. Saunders, PhD 