Ayesha K. Hardison

Ayesha Hardison is Associate Professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas. She is the author of Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature (University of Virginia Press, 2014), is co-editor with Eve Dunbar of African American Literature in Transition: 1930-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and has published several book chapters as well as articles in African American Review and Meridians.Her current research explores representations of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in contemporary Black cultural production. She teaches courses on twentieth-century and contemporary African American fiction, Black women’s writing, and Black feminist theory. Hardison has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Schomburg Center Scholars-In-Residence Program, Black Metropolis Research Consortium, National Humanities Center Summer Residency Program, Humanities Kansas, and the Ford Foundation. In addition to serving as director of HBW, she is co-editor of the multidisciplinary journal Women, Gender, and Families of Color.