“ZORA NEALE HURSTON’S FLORIDA DUST TRACKS”
While Zora Neale Hurston’s most famous novel Their Eyes Were Watching Godhas been conventionally read in terms of being one of the greatest love stories about “two people who happen to be black,” and/or the story of a woman’s search for self, love, and fulfillment, the Florida setting framing the novel is often overlooked in terms of its significance. This lecture proposes to set both the novel and the author in sociohistorical, geographic, and cultural contexts by examining: Zora Neale Hurston’s Eatonville roots and their impact on the novel; her anthropological research in Florida on African American working class culture and in Haiti on Vodou and how these academic interests relate to the novel; and, her final years in Ft. Pierce and the circumstances surrounding the Hurston “renaissance” which occurred in the 1970’s that catapulted Their Eyes Were Watching God to its current canonical/popular status.
EVENT IS FREE BUT YOUR RSVP IS REQUIRED.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Since arriving at FIU in 2003, Professor Russell’s research and teaching interests have focused on the intersections of race, gender, class, postcoloniality and genre. Her research has primarily examined narrative form and its relationship to configurations of national/racial identities. To this end, her book, Legba’s Crossing: Narratology in the African Atlantic was published by the University of Georgia Press, 2009. She has published in American Literature, Contours: A Journal of the African Diaspora; African American Review; and The Massachusetts Review and in several edited book collections. She is currently at work on her second book, titled: Popular Culture, Gender, and Economy in the Caribbean, and has related articles forthcoming on Reggae musician Tanya Stephens and internationally acclaimed Barbadian singer Rihanna. She is an active affiliated professor with African and African Diaspora Studies, the Latin American and Caribbean Center and Women’s Studies ,and, belongs to several professional organizations including the Modern Language Association and the Caribbean Studies Assocation. At the graduate level, Russell teaches C19th Narratives of Enslavement and Resistance and African Diaspora Women Writers and at the undergraduate, C19th, C20th African American Literatures, Major Caribbean Writers, Black History and the Fictive Imagination, and Black Citizenships