In Print: Ain't I An Anthropologist
Publication Title
Ain't I An Anthropologist: Zora Neale Hurston Beyond the Literary Icon
Author
Publisher
University of Illinois Press
Publication Date
2023
About the Book (from the publisher)
Iconic as a novelist and popular cultural figure, Zora Neale Hurston remains underappreciated as an anthropologist. Is it inevitable that Hurston’s literary authority should eclipse her anthropological authority? If not, what sociocultural and institutional values and processes shape the different ways we read her work? Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall considers the polar receptions to two of Hurston’s areas of achievement by examining the critical response to her work across both fields. Drawing on a wide range of readings, Freeman Marshall explores Hurston’s popular appeal as iconography, her elevation into the literary canon, her concurrent marginalization in anthropology despite her significant contributions, and her place within constructions of Black feminist literary traditions.
Perceptive and original, Ain’t I an Anthropologist is a long-awaited reassessment of Zora Neale Hurston’s place in American cultural and intellectual life.
About the Author
Jennifer Freeman Marshall is an associate professor here at Purdue University, where she teaches in the Department of English and School of Interdisciplinary Studies. She received her M.A. in Anthropology from Georgia State University, and her PhD in Women's Studies from Emory University. Her honors and awards are lengthy including: 2015-2016 Exceptional Early Career Teaching Award Nomination, English Excellence in Teaching Committee; 2014 - 2015 Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award, in 2013-2014 both the Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award, Department of English and Teaching for Tomorrow Award at Purdue University and the National Women's Studies Association Women of Color Leadership Project Faculty Participant in 2013 and 2014. Jennifer is also the author of "In Search of Heidi Durrow within a Black Woman's Literary Tradition: On Reading The Girl Who Fell from the Sky" published in Forum for World Literature Studies in 2013. She holds professional memberships with the National Women’s Studies Association, Women of Color Caucus, NWSA, Modern Language Association, Reception Studies Society, and American Anthropology Association.