Dr. Carolyn Denard, Founder, Toni Morrison Society

Abstract

Carolyn Denard received her BA in English from Jackson State University, her MAT in English from Indiana University, and her PhD in American Studies from Emory University, where she focused on twentieth century American literature and cultural history and where she completed a doctoral dissertation on Toni Morrison. She has received post-doctoral research fellowships from the American Association of University Women, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, and the Women’s Studies Program at Emory University.

As founder of the Toni Morrison Society, Dr. Denard extended the invitation and led the efforts to establish the Society as an official author society of the American Literature Association in May 1993. Since the Society’s founding, she has served as the Society’s first president and as the Society’s Board Chair, a position she has held since 1996.

Her scholarly research focuses on African American myths, ethics, and cultural tropes in Toni Morrison's fiction. A leading authority on Morrison, she has contributed to critical anthologies and essay collections on Morrison's work, and she is editor of What Moves at the Margin: Selected Non- Fiction by Toni Morrison (University Press of Mississippi 2008) and Toni Morrison: Conversations, a collection of interviews (University Press of Mississippi 2008). She is currently completing a book- length manuscript entitled Tar Women and Magical Men: Myth and Heroism in Toni Morrison’s Fiction.