Catherine C. Saunders teaches courses on African American and Black Diasporic literature, film, and theory. Her scholarship centers on Black interiority as it appears in African American literature and the literatures that ornament the Black diaspora.
She has pursued her research and scholarly interests in several publications that include Jump the Cut, Teaching Humanities with Cultural Responsiveness at HBCUs and HSIs, A Cross-Cultural Examination of Women in Higher Education and the Workplace, and Studies in American Culture. She also served as a Guest Editor for the St. John’s Humanities Review in 2018. Her upcoming work will be featured in The Routledge Companion to Toni Morrison and The Langston Hughes Review to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of “The Negro Artist and Racial Mountain.” Collaboratively, Saunders’ scholarly work seeks to conceptualize Black people and Black culture beyond response and resistance.
Her first monograph furthers Afrodemia, a concept she developed to reference the interior institution that African American literature creates organically. The text builds on African American literary contribution to include literatures of the Black diaspora, and she critically interrogates how Afrodemia curates a conceptual lens that catapults being and blackness toward a liberation that preceded and withstood colonial disruption. Saunders’ second monograph contemplates the intersection of race and gender and pursues a conceptual theory that encapsulates being, blackness, and femininity beyond feminism and its many iterations.
Catherine is an active member of MLA and the Toni Morrison Society. She is also the Public Relations Director for CLA (College Language Association).
Contact
- office: Turlington 4354
- email: <ca.saunders@ufl.edu>
- social media handle: @professhercat
- Professor Saunders’ website