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Barbara McCaskill

Blurred image of the arch used as background for stylistic purposes.
Professor; Co-P.I., Culture and Community at the Penn Center and Civil Rights Digital Library;
Associate Academic Director, Willson Center for Humanities & Arts

I earned a B.A. (Summa cum Laude) from Columbus State University and M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory University. I I have published scores of peer-reviewed journal essays and book chapters on African American literature.  My seventh book, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2025, is African American Literature in Transition, 1880-1900, co-edited with Caroline Gebhard.  I have an eighth book of eighteen original essays under contract at Edinburgh University Press co-edited with Sarah Ruffing Robbins and Mona Narain, titled The Lives, Writings and Legacies of Phillis Wheatley Peters.  My five additional books areThe Magnificent Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford: Transatlantic Reformer and Race Man, co-authored by Sidonia Serafini with Rev. Paul Walker, Highgate Baptist Church, Birmingham, UK (UGA Press, 2020; paperback reprint 2024); a single-authored study titled Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory (UGA Press, 2015); Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877-1919 (NYU Press, 2006), a collection of fifteen original essays co-edited with Caroline Gebhard; a teaching edition of the 1860 memoir Running 1,000 Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (UGA Press, 1999); and a collection of essays, co-edited with Suzanne Miller, titled Multicultural Literature and Literacies: Making Space for Difference (SUNY Press, Series on Literature, Culture, and Learning, 1993). 

Throughout my career I have also been engaged in externally funded Public Humanities projects. I am currently co-P.I. for the cross-institutional, multidisciplinary Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. I was a Co-Principal Investigator for the Civil Rights Digital Library Initiative (CRDL), initially funded by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.  We earned a regional Emmy@ for the two-hour documentary How We Got Over (2009), hosted by Andrew Young, former U.N. Ambassador and Mayor of Atlanta.  In 2010 we earned a national award, the Helen and Martin Schwartz Prize for Public Humanities Programs, and in 2011, an Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of an Archives from the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Board.  With Professor Layli Phillips Maparyan I co-founded and co-edited Womanist Theory and Research, formerly The Womanist, which was supported by a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship, along with a three-year summer program to support faculty research.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Office hours:

Please email me to make an appointment. Thank you.

 

 

Website: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=40432953&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile

Grants:

Culture and Community at Penn Center National Historic District, Mellon Foundation, 2021-25, $1,000,000

"A World Within Worlds: The Visionary Art of Sam Doyle," Henry Luce Foundation American Art Grant, 2023, $20,000 

"Favored by The Muses," Public Impact Grant, Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, 2023, $8,000

"Family Literacy and Children's Literature Webinar, The Genius of Phillis Wheatley Peters: A Poet and Her Legacies, Georgia Humanities Grant, 2023, $2500

"Black Activism: A Transatlantic Legacy," Mellon Foundation through Global Georgia Program, Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, 2020, $23,900

The Civil Rights Digital Library, Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant, 2005-10, $761, 427

"Black Poets Lean South: A Cave Canem Symposium," with Regents Professor Judith Ortiz Cofer, Georgia Humanities Grant, 2008, $2500

"New Voices in American Literature: A Multicultural Symposium," with Regents Professor Judith Ortiz Cofer, Georgia Humanities Grant, 2007, $2500

The Womanist Fellowship Program and Womanist Theory and Research, Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship, 1994-2004, $250,000

Selected Publications:

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P. T. Stanford Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem
LL Cover Running 1000 Cover
Multicultural  

                                                                                                                                       

 

                                                       

 

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Articles Featuring Barbara McCaskill

Barbara McCaskill's Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory was featured on the nationally syndicated Criminal podcast ("In Plain Sight," Episode #59, 1/20/17).  In a review of that episode…

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