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Gretchen
Holbrook Gerzina Joins Barnard as Director of Pan-African
Studies Program and Professor of English
 New
York, NY— Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, author of The
New York Times Notable Book Black London on the
black population of 18th century Britain, and host of a nationally
syndicated radio show "The Book Show," which has
featured noted authors such as Toni Morrison and Salmon Rushie,
has joined the faculty of Barnard College from Vassar College,
where she taught for 14 years. Gerzina will direct Barnard’s
Pan-African Studies and, as Professor of English, teach African-American
literature and biography.
"My goal is to develop a stronger curriculum for the
Pan-African Studies Program in order to make it one of the
best of its kind in a liberal arts college," said Gerzina.
Gerzina said that several new majors in Pan-African Studies
have already been added this fall. "It is great to work
with an amazingly multi-talented group of students –
one of my students is focusing on horticulture and therapy
in the black community; another is a budget analyst for a
local hospital on a multi-million-dollar project on HIV and
women in South Africa."
In addition to strengthening the curriculum, Gerzina promises
to bring African-American scholars, writers, and other noted
black intellectuals to campus as part of a new lecture series.
The first event in the new series will be with Paul Gilroy,
renowned author and Professor of African-American Studies
at Yale, to be held Oct. 28. Gilroy will give a multi-media
lecture on Jimi Hendrix. Next year, the series is tentatively
titled "Writing Black Lives," and will focus on
autobiographies of African-Americans.
Gerzina has written several books, including Carrington:
A Life (about the Bloomsbury figure Dora Carrington, whose
life was made into a film starring Emma Thompson); Black
London (about the black population of 18th century Britain),
a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year"
in 1995; and edited the book Black Victorians/Black Victoriana.
Her latest projects, due to be released in 2004, include:
Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author
of The Secret Garden, and Bijah and Lucy: Love in the
Time of Colonial Slavery (the story of two former slaves
in colonial Massachusetts and Vermont, who became landowners
and public figures. Lucy Terry Prince is considered to be
the first African-American poet). It will be the lead book
for the Amistad imprint of HarperCollins, and an audio book.
For the past five years, Gerzina has also hosted the nationally
syndicated radio program "The Book Show," which
has featured interviews with Toni Morrison, David McCullough,
Anna Quindlen, A.S. Byatt, Michael Eric Dyson, Salmon Rushdie
and Michael Cunningham. Her interview with Jamaica Kincaid
won an honorable mention from the Communicator Awards for
those in the national media.
Prior to joining Barnard, Gerzina was Director of Africana
Studies (since 2000) and Professor of English at Vassar for
14 years. In 1989-90, she was a Fellow of the Humanities Council
at Princeton University, where she worked with Toni Morrison
on her course "American Africanism." She received
her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Stanford
University, an M.A. in English Literature from Simmons College,
and B.A. from Marlboro College in Vermont.
She is the recipient of two grants from the National Foundation
for the Humanities, and has been the Fulbright Distinguished
Scholar to Great Britain. She is an honorary fellow at the
University of Exeter in Devon, England. Gerzina has appeared
frequently on the radio, as well as in several British documentary
films.
Contact: Petra Tuomi, Public Affairs Office, 212-854-7907,
ptuomi@barnard.edu
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