Dr. Hortense Spillers
Hortense J. Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, Emerita, at Vanderbilt University, is a preeminent scholar of African American literary and cultural theory. She earned her Ph.D. in literature from Brandeis University and has held tenured appointments at Wellesley College, Haverford College (where she served as Chair of the Department of English), Emory University, and Cornell University. Her visiting appointments include a residency in Duke University's Program in Literature (2002–2003) and two tri-semester guest professorships at theJohn F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University of Berlin (2000–2001).
Dr. Spillers’ research spans American and African American literature, psychoanalytic theory, Black feminist thought, and the intersections of race, gender, and national identity. Her theoretical interventions have significantly shaped the fields of Black Studies, literary criticism,and cultural theory. She has held research fellowships at the National Humanities Center and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, with additional support from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations.
She is the author of Black, White, and In Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2003), a foundational collection in African American literary criticism. Her editorial contributions include Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition (co-edited with Marjorie Pryse, Indiana University Press) and Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text (Routledge), edited for the English Institute series. She also served as a period editor for The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, shaping canonical frameworks for the field.
Dr. Spillers serves on multiple editorial boards, including the boundary 2 Editorial Collective, and previously held a seat on the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association. Her recent publications appear in The New Centennial Review, das argument, and boundary 2, further advancing discourse in transatlantic Black Studies and critical theory.
She has delivered keynote lectures and named talks at institutions across the U.S. and abroad,including the Sidney Warhaft Distinguished Memorial Lecture (University of Manitoba, 2010), the W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures (Harvard University, 2014), and the Henry Louis Gates Jr. Lecture (Yale University, 2016).
Her contributions have been recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from Callaloo (2016), the Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association (2017), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022), and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Yale University (2024).She resides in Nashville, Tennessee, and continues to influence the fields of Black literary and cultural studies through ongoing research on the formation of Black culture and the political imaginaries of
Black women.