ROBERT J. PATTERSON, Assistant Professor, Ph.D., Emory University (2007) specializes in African American literary and cultural studies. He currently is completing his first book project, Literary Activism: Civil Rights Discourses in Contemporary African American Literature and Culture, which analyzes the ways in which 5 contemporary African American writers' fictive texts have shaped the discourses on civil rights in the post-Civil Rights era. Investigating this overlap between literature, theology, and politics, Literary Activism re-thinks about the types of rights that are—and should be—included in the term "civil rights," while providing a cultural critique of the gender and sexual ideologies that undermine these political enfranchisement efforts. As he finishes this book, he is beginning a second project, tentatively titled, Why I Did (Not) Get Married: The Representational Politics of Marriage, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary African American Literature and Culture. This book is an interdisciplinary study that analyzes how and why the institution of marriage has been represented in particular ways and what the implications of those representations are. He contests the notion that marriage is a cure-all for African Americans' political and social problems, examining the ways in which the 1965 Moynihan Report's claims remain central to marriage discourses, even ones that attempt to challenge Moynihan's assertions. In addition to literary studies, Dr. Patterson's research and teaching interests include African American, American, cultural, and gender studies, as well as liberation and womanist theologies.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

• "The Souls of Black Folk." Icons of African American Literature. Ed. Yolanda Page. Forthcoming, Spring 2009, Greenwood Press.
• " African American Feminist Theories and Literary Criticism." The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Writing. Ed. Angelyn Mitchell and Danille Taylor. Forthcoming, December 2008, Cambridge University Press.
• "Disrupting Racial Discourse: Teaching 'Recitatif.'" The Fiction of Toni Morrison: Teaching and Writing on Race, Culture, and Identity. Ed. Jami Carlacio., August 2007, NCTE.

AWARDS AND HONORS

• McKnight Junior Faculty Fellowship, 08-09
• Ford Pre-doctoral Fellowship, Awarded in 2002

FALL 2008 AND SPRING 2009 CLASSES

• Fall 2008 and Spring 2009; On-Leave, Not Teaching

SPRING 2008 CLASSES

• ENG 3014: Critical Issues in Literary Studies: An Introduction to Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory
• AML 5608: What Happens to Chosenness, Chosen Figures, and Civil Rights When They Meet the African American Literary Imagination? (Grad)

FALL 2007 CLASSES

• AML 2600:06-Honors Introduction to African American Literature
• AML 4604:01- Movements, Clashes, and Definitional Shifts: 20th Century African American Literature and Literary Criticism