MAXINE LAVON MONTGOMERY is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English. She earned a doctorate in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her areas of academic specialization include Contemporary Black Women’s Fiction, African Diaspora Literature and Culture, Black Apocalyptic and Postapocalyptic Literature and Expressive Culture, and Critical Race Theory.

Professor Montgomery has published widely on the fiction of Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison. Currently, her research focuses on the intersection between race, gender, sexualities and vernacular culture. Her most recent book, The Postapocalyptic Black Female Imagination, examines the kinds of catastrophe we are now witnessing – pandemics, hurricanes, floods, and moments of social unrest – against the backdrop of our current moment with a view to interrogating futuristic imaginaries in representative works of fiction and visual culture by black women across the diaspora, from Octavia E. Butler to Beyonce. A spin-off book, Un-Zombifying Blackness: Race, Gender, and Vernacular Culture, is in the proposal phase. Her work in the area of contemporary black women’s fiction has been published in South Carolina Review, College Language Association Journal, Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, and African-American Review, the foremost publication in the field.

A 2021 National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant enabled Professor Montgomery to carry out a series of programmatic events surrounding the digitization of Gloria Naylor’s unpublished works, located at Lehigh University. Those events will culminate with the publication of a two-volume collection of new critical essays examining the intersection between Naylor’s unpublished and published works with a view to charting new directions in Naylor scholarship, Digital Humanities, and Black Women’s Archival Studies.

The chair of Florida State University’s 2020-21 Anti-Racism, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force, Professor Montgomery is also the recipient of four University awards for excellence in Teaching.

Professor Montgomery has shared her research and teaching insights with numerous outlets and publications, including:

Tallahassee Democrat profile, March 24, 2023: "25 Women for 2023: Professor Maxine Montgomery promotes literacy around the community"

Tallahassee Woman profile, February 1, 2023:

"Super Heroes: Led by purpose with purpose"

Florida State University Commencement Speech, December 9, 2022:

One attendee commented: "My whole family and I have been talking about her speech for the past 24 hours. It was so inspiring, and undoubtedly the best grad speech we’ve heard."

WFSU Radio interview, June 6, 2022: "Voices That Inspire"

National Public Radio interview, February 10, 2020: "What Fictional Pandemics Can Teach Us About Real-World Survival"