• Donavan Ramon

    Bildner Scholar (Fall 2023)

    Dr. Donavan L. Ramon is an Assistant Professor of English at Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville. A specialist in African American and African Diasporic Literatures, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in these fields. He earned his BA in English and the Special Honors Curriculum from Hunter College - CUNY, where he was a Mellon Mays Fellow, and his doctorate in African American Literature from Rutgers University. He has published articles on Philip Roth and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and most recently guest edited a special double issue of the South Atlantic Review on the ninetieth anniversary of Nella Larsen's Passing. His first monograph, Striking Features: Psychoanalysis and Racial Passing Narratives, will be published by Mercer University Press in 2024. It explores the psychoanalytic motivations for jumping the color line in African American literature.

     

    Mini-course: Racial Passing: Efforts to Belong and Assimilate in the United States

     

    More information on Dr. Ramon can be found at his personal website: https://www.donavanramon.com/.

  • Justin Cammy

    Aresty Visiting Scholar (Spring 2024)

    Justin Cammy is professor and chair of Jewish Studies and World Literatures at Smith College, where he teaches and researches Yiddish literature and the cultural history of Jewish Eastern Europe. In recent years he has held fellowships at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, the University of Michigan, and Yad Vashem. His critical edition and translation of Sutzkever's From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg was awarded the 2022 Leviant Prize in Yiddish Studies from the Modern Language Association.

     

    For more information on Justin Cammy see https://www.smith.edu/academics/faculty/justin-cammy