Teresa Gilliams is Professor of English. A Toni Morrison devotee known affectionately by her students as “TG,” she received her Ph.D. in English from Howard University where she specialized in African American Literature. Dr. Gilliams has been awarded fellowships from The Ford Foundation and the Fulbright Program and has received teaching awards that celebrate her student-centered practices. While her research and teaching focus broadly on 20th and 21st-century African American literature, black feminisms, African diasporic studies, oral history, transnational feminisms, and intersectional studies of race, she teaches a wide range of courses in the English Department and General Studies programs. Many of the courses she teaches take as primary issue the imperative of pursuing racial justice, confronting the enduring legacy of racism, and undoing the structural elements that sustain this legacy.

• 20th and 21st-century African American Literature
• Black Women’s Writing
• Critical Race Theory
• The Harlem Renaissance
• Hip Hop

• ENG 135: American Short Story
• ENG 204: Survey of American Literature
• ENG 210: African American Literature
• ENG 235:  Black Women Writers
• ENG 235: Hip Hop
• ENG 390: Slave Narratives
• ENG 390: Toni Morrison
• ENG 390: The Harlem Renaissance
• ENG 491: Senior Seminar
• SYN 304: What is Grit?
• SYN 306: Hip Hop
• FYS 100: Black Lives Matter

Select Scholarship
“Temper Your Rhetoric.” Stories from the Front of the Room: How Higher Education Faculty of
Color Overcome Challenges and Thrive in the Academy. Eds. Michelle Harris, Sherrill L. Sellers. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

“Engaged Pedagogy in the Harlem Renaissance Classroom.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. Duke University Press. Volume 15.2, April 2015.

“Sojourner Truth Meets Medusa: Toward a Fulbright Revisioning of the Black Woman Academic’s Inheritance of ‘Doin Too Much’.” Feminist Wire. November 7, 2012.

“Models and Assessment of Collaborative Research in the Arts and Humanities. CUR Quarterly. Volume 29. Number 1. Fall 2008.

Bibliographic Entry on Marita Bonner. African American National Biography. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Higginbotham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Bibliographic Entry on “Connie Briscoe.” An Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Eds. Hans Ostrom and David Macey. Westport: Greenwood Publishers, 2005.

Bibliographic Entry on “Nathan McCall.” An Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Eds. Hans Ostrom and David Macey. Westport: Greenwood Publishers, 2005.

Bibliographic Entry on Diane McKinney-Whetstone.” An Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Eds. Hans Ostrom and David Macey. Westport: Greenwood Publishers, 2005.

Review of Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters. Ed. Carla Kaplan. African American Review 38.3 (Fall 2004): 8-11.

Select Faculty Seminars
The Center for Hellenic Studies. Ancient Greek in the Modern Classroom (Histories of Herodotus). Washington, DC. November 11-13, 2016.

Teaching Herodotus Seminar. Harvard University. The Council of Independent Colleges. The Center for Hellenic Studies. Washington, DC. July 25-31, 2016.

Summer Institute on Black Europe: Interrogating Citizenship. Race and Ethnic Relations. International Institute for Research and Education (IIRE). Amsterdam, The Netherlands. June 22-July 3, 2015.

Slave Narratives Seminar. Yale University. Sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Council of Independent Colleges. June 15-18, 2008.

Select Conference Papers
“The Cultural Value of Resilience: Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.” Comparative Drama Conference. Orlando, Florida. April 6, 2019.

Plenary Participant. “60 Years On: The Legacy of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.”
Comparative Drama Conference. Orlando, Florida. April 6, 2019.

“Interrogation, Struggle and Reclamations of Grit in Jay-Z’s 4:44.” Race and Pedagogy Conference. 2018 Race & Pedagogy National Conference. University of Puget Sound. September 27-29, 2018.

“The Cultural Recovery of Grit and Marginalized and Hidden Histories in A Mercy.” Northeast Modern Language Association Conference. April 12, 2018.

Cultivating “Prisoners of Hope” in the First Year Seminar. Northeast Modern Language
Association (NeMLA) Conference. March 25, 2017. Baltimore, Maryland.

“The Black Aesthetic in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and Ma Rainey’s Black
Bottom.” Comparative Drama Conference. Stevenson University. March 31, 2016.

“The Sum Total of Black Culture”: August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Northeast Modern Language Association Conference (NeMLA). May 1, 2016. Toronto, Ontario.

“Hold[ing] on to a little dignity”: An Exploration of Goodness in The Bluest Eye, A Mercy and “Sweetness.” Northeast Modern Language Association Conference (NeMLA). May 1, 2016. Toronto, Ontario.

Select Faculty-Student Collaborative Research
Faculty Mentor, Mariah Stokes, NCUR Conference Paper, “White Masculinity and Deliberate Forgetting in A Mercy.” Kennesaw State University. Kennesaw , GA. April 10-13, 2019.

Interim 2019 ACRE Grant. Faculty Advisor for Emily Curley’s project entitled “Unsung Voices: The Othering of Japanese-Americans Post-World War I”

Senior Honors Thesis Advisor, Jennifer Heydt (Fall 2018-Spring 2019) “Liberation from Fear: Institutional Racism and the African American Home.”

Senior Honors Thesis Advisor, Cassie Belizaire (Fall 2017-Spring 2018). “To Hip Hop with Love.”

Senior Honors Thesis Advisor, Kyle Bernadyn, (Fall 2017-Spring 2018). “We Been Waitin’ For You: An Analysis of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly for its Inclusion in the African-American Literary Canon.”

Interim 2016 ACRE Grant. Faculty Advisor for Travis Gray’s ACRE project entitled “No Censorship without Fellowship: Silencing the Candid Voice Through the Unacknowledged Progression of Banned Books.”

Select College Service
Chair, Honors and Awards Committee, 2012-Present
Member-at-Large, Albright College Rank and Tenure Committee, Fall 2019-Present
Faculty Advisor, African American Society (AAS)
Faculty Advisor, African Diaspora Group (ADG)
Faculty Advisor, Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity

Dr. Henry P. and M. Paige Laughlin Annual Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching, 2018.
Summer Faculty Research Grant Recipient, Albright College, 2017.
Harvard University, Ancient Greece Fellow, Summer 2016.
Albright College Teaching and Learning Grant, Summer 2016.
Fulbright Scholar, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Aristotle University, Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece, 2011-2012.
The Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award, 2010.
Minority Junior Faculty Award, Christian R. & Mary F. Lindback Foundation, 2007.
The Dr. Henry P. and M. Paige Laughlin Annual Distinguished Authorship Award, 2007.
Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, 2002.