Lois A. Brown

Associate Professor of English
Director of the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts

Specialization
Autobiography and poetry; African American literature; nineteenth-century American women writers; activism and writings of Pauline Hopkins

Lois Brown, an associate professor of English, was recently honored with one of the first African American History Awards given by the Museum of Afro-American History. The museum lauded her for her "extraordinary commitment to American history" and her "obvious commitment to education and equality."

Brown received the award for her work on Memoir of James Jackson, the attentive and obedient scholar, who died in Boston, October 31, 1833, aged six years and eleven months. This book, originally written by Susan Paul, an African American schoolteacher, had languished in obscurity until Brown stumbled upon a mention of it while pursuing research on novelist Pauline Hopkins. Brown went on to edit and write an introduction for a new edition of the book, which has been published by Harvard University Press. It chronicles the brief life of a freeborn black child in Boston, shedding light on the spiritual and political education of African American children in the antebellum North.

Brown teaches courses on African American literature, nineteenth-century American women writers, and contemporary African American writers, such as Toni Morrison. In her courses students are introduced to wide range of written genres; in English 250, African American Novel, for example, students read and discuss mysteries, romances, works of science fiction, and historical novels as they consider "how events like the Civil War and literary movements such as the Harlem Renaissance have influenced the African American novel tradition."

Brown, a recent recipient of a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, spent the 2000–2001 academic year at Harvard University's DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research. She is currently at work on a book about the African American novelist Pauline Hopkins.

News Links:

"New Directions for Weissman Center A Q&A with Lois Brown," College Street Journal, March 11, 2005

"Five MHC Professors Garner Teaching and Scholarship Awards," College Street Journal, April 30, 2004

"MHC Professor Rediscovers Biography of Nineteenth-Century African American Boy," College Street Journal, April 28, 2000