Lesley Larkin

Assistant Professor
M.A. & Ph.D., University of Washington
B.A., Linfield College
llarkin@nmu.edu

Lesley Larkin, Assistant Professor of English, works on race and gender in American literature, specializing in twentieth-century African American narrative.  She received her Ph.D., with honors, from the department of English at the University of Washington in 2007.  Lesley is currently developing a book project, derived from her dissertation, that focuses on how twentieth-century African American literature confronts the various academic practices of reading race that have accompanied its partial inclusion into the literary canon.  She is particularly interested in how African American narratives model and theorize alternative reading practices and literary pedagogies.  An article on Ralph Ellison, adapted from this project, is forthcoming in LIT:  Literature Interpretation Theory.  Lesley has also published on reproductive technologies in contemporary American culture and plans to pursue a study of race, women’s book clubs, and representations of maternity.  She and her family, which include husband Kellie, who works in technology consulting, and kids Killian (age 5) and Alexandra (age 15 months), are thrilled to have made the move to lovely Marquette from traffic-snarled Seattle.  They look forward most of all to learning the intricacies and nuances of snow management and removal.