updated & abbreviated June 2017
Emily Jeanne Lordi
EMPLOYMENT: Associate Professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, September 2016-present
Assistant Professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, September 2011-August 2016
Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Cornell University, July 2009-July 2011
EDUCATION: Ph.D., English and Comparative Literature (with Distinction), Columbia University, October 2009
M.A., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2003
B.A., English (minor, Art History), Vassar College, 2001 (summa cum laude; Alice D. Snyder Award for Excellence in English)
Visiting Scholar in English, Worcester College, Oxford University, 2000-2001
BOOKS:
Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature, Rutgers University Press, 2013 • Reviewed in Choice, Paste Magazine, MELUS, American Literary History Online, Journal of American Culture • Chapter two reprinted in The Mahalia Jackson Reader, ed. Mark Burford (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2017)
Donny Hathaway Live, Bloomsbury Academic (33⅓ series)
Soul Survivals: Black Musical Aesthetics from the 1960s to the Present (in progress)
ARTICLES:
“’black and going on women’: Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Alexander, and the Poetry of Grief,” forthcoming in Palimpsest, 2017
“Surviving the Hustle: Beyoncé’s Performance of Work,” forthcoming in Black Camera, 2017 “James Baldwin and the Sound of Soul,” New Centennial Review 16.2 (Fall 2016)
“Souls Intact: The Soul Performances of Audre Lorde, Aretha Franklin, and Nina Simone,” Women & Performance 26.1 (July 2016)
“Fading Out: White Flight and Sly and the Family Stone’s ‘Stand!,’” Journal of Popular Music Studies 24.3 (September 2012)
“‘Window Seat’: Erykah Badu, Projective Cultural Politics, and the Obama Era,” Post45: Peer Reviewed, December 2011
BOOK CHAPTERS:
“Keyword: Soul,” Keywords in African American Studies, ed. R. Ferguson, E. Edwards, J. Ogbar. forthcoming 2018
“Jazz and Blues Modernisms,” The Cambridge Companion to the American Modernist Novel, ed. Joshua L. Miller, 2015
“Black Radio: Robert Glasper, Esperanza Spalding, Janelle Monáe,” forthcoming in Are You Entertained? New Essays on Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century, ed. S. Drake, D. Ikard, D. Simmons, foreword by Mark Anthony Neal, 2017
BIBLIOGRAPHIC WORK:
“Post-Soul Aesthetics,” Oxford Bibliographies online, forthcoming 2017
SELECTED PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP:
“‘Radical Hope’ and the Political Power of the Open Letter,” Atlantic.com, 5/15/2017
“The Casual Excellence of Ella Fitzgerald,” PBS/American Experience, 4/25/2017
“Human After All: On Janelle Monáe in Hidden Figures and Moonlight, Pitchfork, 1/12/2017
Review of Solange’s A Seat at the Table, Slate, 10/6/2016
“Michael Jackson Died 7 Years Ago and His Legacy Still Eludes Us,” The Root, 6/25/2016
“Beyoncé’s Other Women: The Soul Muses of Lemonade,” The Fader, 5/6/2016
“How Prince Grieved,” The Fader, 4/22/2016
“Luminous Loss,” review of Light of the World, by Elizabeth Alexander, Los Angeles Review of Books, 6/4/2015
2 “Why is Academic Writing So Beautiful? Notes on Black Feminist Scholarship,” The Feminist Wire, 3/5/2014
“Beyoncé’s Boundaries” (review of BEYONCÉ), New Black Man, 12/18/2013
“Black Magic, White Soul” (review of Muscle Shoals documentary), The New Inquiry, 11/19/2013
EDITORIAL WORK:
Editor of Exhibitions, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 2008-2011 Book Review Editor, Callaloo, 2009-2010
INVITED PRESENTATIONS & CONFERENCE PAPERS (Recent):
“Love Child: Diana Ross and the Small Black Female Voice, MoPop Conference, Seattle, April 21, 2017
“Never Catch Me: False Endings from Soul to Post-Soul” (paper), Religion and Black Music in a Post-Soul Age Symposium, Yale University, April 11, 2017
“Donny Hathaway Live,” “Black Pool of Genius” Donny Hathaway Celebration, Stanford University, April 6, 2017
“Natural Women: Toward a Queer Female Soul Aesthetic” (paper), American Studies Association, Denver, CO, November 17-20, 2016
“Sula as a Soul Text” (paper) & “New Perspectives on Aesthetics and Resistance” (roundtable), Celebrating African American Literature Conference, Penn State, October 28-29, 2016
“Soul Sisters: Black Power Music from Nina Simone to Beyoncé” (lecture), Quinsigamond Community College, Worcester, MA, October 3, 2016
“Pop Music and American Culture” (panelist), NEH 50th Anniversary Symposium, University of Virginia, September 14-17, 2016
“Amazing Grace: Performing Soul in the Black Power Era” (lecture), Columbia University, April 28, 2016
“Erykah Badu’s Afropresentism” (paper), EMP Pop Conference, Seattle, April 15-17, 2016
“The Meaning of Soul in American Culture” (lecture), George Mason University, February 11, 2016
3 “Little Tenderness: Otis Redding’s Soul Aesthetic” (paper) & “The Platonic Erotic: Aretha Franklin and Donny Hathaway” (paper), EMP Pop Conference, Seattle, April 16-19, 2015
“Bessie Smith Salon” (panelist), Barnard-Columbia Blues Symposium, Columbia University, February 13-14, 2015
“Black Sounds Matter: African American Literature and Black Popular Music” (lecture), University of Georgia, January 22, 2015
“Unfinished Business—Keyword ‘Strategy’” (American Literature Section panel) & “Black Feminism and Academic Prose” (paper), MLA, Vancouver, January 7-10, 2015
“Black Vocality: Cultural Memory, Identities, and Practices of African-American Singing” Symposium (presenter), Columbia College, Chicago, November 18-19, 2014
“‘I Woke Up Like This’: Beyoncé, Fabulousness, and the Ethics of Work” (lecture), Delta Xi Phi Faculty Lecture Series, UMass Amherst, November 3, 2014
Plenary session on Stax Records (panelist), Association for the Study of African American Life Conference, Memphis, TN, September 24-28, 2014
New England Americanist Collective workshop, Brown University, June 5-7, 2014
“Black Radio” (paper), “The Queen and Her Court” (Beyoncé roundtable discussion), & “Critical Karaoke” performance (published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies, October 28, 2014), EMP Pop Conference, Seattle, April 24-27, 2014
“Make Me Wanna Holler: Soul Singing and the On-Key Scream” (paper), International Association for the Study of Popular Music, UNC-Chapel Hill, March 13-16, 2014
“How I Got Over: Ralph Ellison in the Soul Era” (paper), MELUS Ralph Ellison Centennial Conference, Oklahoma City, OK, March 6-9, 2014
INTERVIEWS, MEDIA, OUTREACH:
Donny Hathaway Live Readings: University of Virginia Bookstore (September, 2016); Seminary Coop Bookstore, Chicago (January, 2017); Busboys & Poets, Washington, D.C. (May, 2017)
“Reclaimed Soul” Interview with Ayana Contreras, WBEZ Chicago, February, 2017
What Makes Donny Hathaway Live One of the Greatest Albums Ever, NPR/Bullseye, April 2017
“Race, Pop Music, and the 1960s,” Podcast with Jack Hamilton, Slate, October 6, 2016
4 “Bad/Dangerous/Invincible: Michael Jackson’s Epic Years,” Panel Discussion at Apollo Theater, Harlem, June 16, 2016
“A Rational Conversation: Do We Need New Old Soul Music?,” interview with Eric Ducker, NPR.org, September 15, 2015
“News One Now with Roland Martin,” discussion of Black Resonance, TV-One and radio interviews, August 18, 2015
BONK reading series, with poets J. Michael Martinez and Jericho Brown, Racine, WI, November 22, 2014
Introduction and discussion of Belle, Hartford Atheneum Theater, October 16, 2014
“Outkasted Conversations,” webcast conversation about Outkast with Regina Bradley, August 28, 2014
“Mary J. Blige’s ‘My Life,’” webcast conversation with Regina Bradley, Treva Lindsey, Tanisha Ford, June 19, 2014 (published in Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, no. 6 [2015])
Left of Black with Mark Anthony Neal, Duke University, April 14, 2014
“Feminists We Love” interview with The Feminist Wire, April 11, 2014
“For the Record: Women Making and Writing About Music.” Fundraiser for Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls: Reading and performance with Daphne Brooks, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Alexandra Vazquez, Labyrinth Books, Princeton, NJ, December 15, 2013
COURSES TAUGHT AT UMASS-AMHERST, 2011-2017:
Graduate: • Introduction to African American Literary Studies • African American Music and Literature • James Baldwin • James Baldwin and Toni Morrison
Undergraduate: • Contemporary African American Literature, 1970-Present • Contemporary African American Literature, 1987-Present • Black Memoir, 1845-2014 • African American Music and Literature • American Fiction, 1920-Present • American Literature and Culture after 1865 (Honors) • American Identities: Recent U.S. Fiction, 2010-2012 • Contemporary Black Women Writers
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