IDOL FAMILY FELLOWS PROGRAM
A collaborative digital humanities project focuses on making visible the work of Black women writers to a new generation.
American poet, journalist and political activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson in a 1915 photograph by Addison Scurlock and a typescript copy of her short story “His Heart’s Desire”
A prolific and thought-provoking author, activist and educator, Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875–1935) influenced some of the most celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance—and yet, her works don’t appear on many K–12 school reading lists.
Read more about the project:
- Villanova Magazine feature - Overlooked No Longer by Megan Walsh-Boyle
- Villanova English Department Blog feature - The 'Steenth Street Research Team attends Association for the Study of African American Life and History
- Villanova English Department Blog feature - Reading Books like Browsing Costco Aisles by Trinity Rogers, AY 2023 Idol Family Student Fellow
- Language and Literature: Taught by Literature Podcast - Research that Resonates
Visit our Website at www.taughtbyliterature.org
Denise Burgher
ABD, English, University of Delaware; African American Public Humanities Initiative and Colored Conventions Project Fellow
Brigitte Fielder, PhD
Associate professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison; author, Relative Races: Genealogies of Interracial Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America (Duke University Press, 2020)
Jean Lutes, PhD
Luckow Family Endowed Chair of English Literature, Villanova University
Current Student Affiliate Fellows
Past Student Affiliate Fellows
Trinity Rogers ’24 CLAS
Janine Hazlewood ’26 CLAS
Arianna Ogando ’23 CLASKashae Garland ’22 CLAS
Cynthia Choo's '23 CLAS
Our Sisters in Politics data is being rolled out in article-length manuscripts. Our first article How Black women get their political news matters for this election, is a new study that analyses where Black women get political information and what educates and facilitates their involvement in the American political system.
This article discusses how they engage with media and news, and how generation, education, and income shape their social media posting patterns.
The authors suggest that there are key variations in how Black women consume political news and how they engage with this information. Politicos must take these variations into account when reaching out to younger and older and higher- and lower-resource Black women. Read the full article here.
Other Readings:
Voter suppression tops Black women’s concerns about democracy
Kamala Harris’ historic nomination could mobilize Black women voters
Nadia E. Brown, PhD
Associate Professor of Political Science and African American Studies
Purdue University
Christine Slaughter, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Boston University
Camille D. Burge, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Villanova University Chair of English Literature, Villanova University
Current Student Affiliate Fellows
Past Student Affiliate Fellows
Danielle Burns '21 MA
Gia Beaton '20 CLAS
Our goal is to explore the political participation and inclusion of minorities in divided societies transitioning from conflict towards peace, with special focus on gender inclusion.
The aim of the research is to help better understand the barriers that various groups face in power-sharing frameworks and how best to address those obstacles, with an eye to contributing to the field of democracy studies and ultimately informing
Research Team
Cera Murtagh, PhD
Villanova University
John Nagle
Queens University Belfast, Northern Irland
Runa Neely, MA
Villanova University
Student Affiliate Fellows