This is a sample biographical statement and approximately 350 words in length. Professor of English, African American Studies, and American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis; she also is past director of WUSTL's Program in African and African American Studies. She received her doctorate from Harvard University in the History of American Civilization, the master's degree from Columbia University's department of English and Comparative Literature, and her bachelor's degree from the City College of New York (CUNY) in English and Creative Writing. The past recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the American Antiquarian Society, the Virginia Center for the Humanities, and the Charles Warren Center for American History at Harvard University, she most recently held the Walt Whitman Distinguished Fulbright Chair in American Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She has published or edited three books: We Wear the Mask: African Americans Write American Literature, 1760-1870 (Columbia UP; 1997); New Essays on Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; (Cambridge UP; 1996; co-edited with D. Garfield); and God Made Man, Man Made the Slave: The Autobiography of George Teamoh, (Mercer UP 1992; co-edited with F. N. Boney and R. L. Hume). "Fictions of the Harlem Renaissance," a monograph, appeared in The Cambridge History of American Literature, Volume Six (2003), and she will edit a two volume collection of Harlem Renaissance fiction for the Library of America. Selections from her work-in-progress, Recipes for Respect (Columbia UP), have appeared in several venues. She previously served the American Studies Association as co-chair of the Program Committee of the 2004 annual convention as well as on the Nominating Committee from 1998 to 2001.