Marymount University’s 2018 Bisson Lecture will feature Dr. Brigitte Fielder, assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her lecture, “Antislavery Children’s Literature and Twenty-First Century Antiracism,” begins at 5 p.m. on April 4 in the University’s Ballston Center Conference Room, 1000 North Glebe Road.
While the event is free and open to the public, registration is requested at marymount.edu/bissonlecture.
Fielder is affiliated with UW-Madison’s departments of Gender and Women’s Studies and Afro-American Studies. Courses she teaches include American Girls & American Girlhood, Long Before Harlem: Early Black Literature, Way Before Beyoncé: Early Black Feminism and Creating Race and Species in the Transatlantic World. She won the inaugural social justice award from the Lydia Maria Child Society, named for the 19th century abolitionist, Native American rights activist and journalist. She also holds the Nellie Y. McKay Fellowship, which honors the scholar who laid foundations for the study of African American literature.
Fielder earned her Ph.D. in English with a minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Cornell University, master’s degrees in English from both Cornell and Syracuse University, a M.A. in Theological and Religious Studies from Drew University and a B.A. from Hartwick College. She held research fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society and the Animal Studies Institute — Wesleyan University Animal Studies program. She has also served as an executive committee member of C19: the Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists.
Established in 2009, the Bisson Lecture in the Humanities honors Professor Emerita Lillian Bisson for her scholarship, teaching, and service to Marymount. The medieval literature scholar directed Marymount’s graduate program in Humanities and chaired the Department of Literature and Languages. She retired from MU in 2010 after 41 years of service.
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Dr. Brigitte Fielder
