MAXINE LAVON MONTGOMERY, Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (1986). Specializes in African-American literature, Women's literature, and Modern Fiction. Professor Montgomery is currently at work on a book-length study of novels by contemporary African-American and Afro-Caribbean women writers. Tentatively entitled, Lessons From the Briar Patch: The Plantation in Recent Black Women's Fiction, the study offers a critical investigation of the vernacular strategies in texts by Toni Morrison, Sherley Anne Williams, Tina McElroy Ansa, Edwidge Danticat, and others revealing a cross cultural engagement with colonial inscriptions of time, space, and identity.

Memberships include: MLA, CLA, The Toni Morrison Society and FCEA.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

• Writing Home: Houses and Spaces of Resistance in the Fiction of Gloria Naylor (U of Tennessee P, forthcoming 2009).
• Conversations With Gloria Naylor., University Press of Mississippi, Spring 2004.
• The Apocalypse in African-American Fiction, U Press of Florida, 1996.
• "Good Housekeeping: Domestic Rituals in the Fiction of Gloria Naylor," Gloria Naylor's Early Novels, U Press of Florida, 1999.
• "Authority, Multivocality, and the New World Order in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe," African-American Review, 1997.
• "Racial Armageddon: The Image of Apocalypse in Richard Wright's Native Son," College Language Association Journal, 1991.
• "A Pilgrimage to the Origins: Apocalypse as Structure and Theme in Toni Morrison's Sula," African-American Review, 1989.

HONORS AND AWARDS

• COFRS Grant, 2004.
• Sabbatical, Fall 2003.
• University Teaching Award, 2002 - 2003.
• W.E.B. DuBois Honor Society Distinguished Faculty Award, 2001.
• Teaching Incentive Program Award, 1994-5.
• University Teaching Award, 1994-5.
• McKnight Junior Faculty Fellowship, 1989-90.
• Gold Key Faculty Member Recognition. 1994.