Timothy Robinson, Assistant Professor of American Literature

Dr. Timothy Mark Robinson (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University) is an Assistant Professor of American literature who specializes in African American Literature. He regularly teaches an upper division level writing intensive course (W) on African American Literature and another upper division course called Langston Hughes and the Blues Aesthetic. In the past, he has taught a graduate level course on Critical Race Theory and an Early American seminar on American Transcendentalism. Future graduate seminars include The Novels of Toni Morrison and Slave and Neo-Slave Narratives.

Dr. Robinson is currently working on his first book, In The Presence of the Ancestor: History, Culture, and the Literary Imagination in African American Fiction. In The Presence of the Ancestor argues that African American literature cannot be fully understood without acknowledging and understanding the presence the ancestral character. Focusing on works by modern and postmodern Black writers, his book establishes that the ancestor’s use in fiction serves as a vehicle for the nuanced exploration of cultural and historical memory.