Profile
Professional biography
Dr. Johnson teaches American and African American literature, introduction to film study, women’s literature and horror fiction. Her essays and entries on African American writers have been published in Modern Fiction, The Reference Guides to Modern and Short American Fiction, and The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing. Dr. Johnson is also the critical theory editor for the Obsidian journal. She is very involved in neighborhood and community issues and loves coffee, tai chi, meditation, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Academic Credentials
A.M., Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A.B. Guilford College
Presentations
Selected Publications and Presentations
“The Life and Writings of Ann Petry.” Chaired at the American Literature Association. San Francisco, CA. May, 2008.
“Nationhood, Gangstahood and Pedagogy: The Continuing Significance of Ann Petry’s Fiction in the Twenty-First Century.” Chaired at the College Language Association. Maimi, Fl. May, 2007.
“Those Nice People: The Horror of Polite Society in Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Flower Garden’.” College Language Association. Nashville, TN. April, 2004.
“Lucille Clifton’s Spiritual Imagination.” Chaired at the American Literature Association. Long Beach, CA. May, 2000.
“Painfully Pointed Paradigms: The Politics of Passion in Ann Allen Shockley’s ‘The Mistress and the Slave Girl’.” American Language Association. Baltimore, MD. May, 1999.
“You Can’t Bind What Don’t Cling: Metaphysical Discourse in August Wilson’s JoeTurner’s Come and Gone.” College Language Association. Atlanta, GA. April, 1997.
“Chuck Davis.” The North Carolina Biography Project. 2002
“Marita Bonner Occomy.” The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States. Oxford University Press, 1995.
“Ernest Gaines.” The American Reference Guide to Short Fiction. 1998.
“Toni Cade Bambara.” The American Reference Guide to Fiction. 1999.
“Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar.” The American Reference Guide to Fiction. 1999
“Writing Within the Script: Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s ‘Ellen Fenton’.” Studies in American Fiction. Autumn (91):165-74, 1991.
Awards
Mary Lynch Johnson Chair in English, 2013-present.
