Ayesha Hardison

Ayesha Hardison is Associate Professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas, as well as director of the History of Black Writing (HBW), a digital humanities project focused on the recovery and preservation of African American literature. As a literary historian, Hardison explores questions of race, gender, genre, social politics, and historical memory. Her book Writing through Jane Crow examines portrayals of Black women in African American literary production during the 1940s and 1950s. She co-edited African American Literature in Transition: Volume 12: 1930-1940 with Eve Dunbar and has published several book chapters as well as journal articles in African American Review and Meridians.

With her ARI fellowship, Hardison will draw on the premise of HBW—which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2023—to explore visual representations of African American fiction through a large-scale exhibition in the Spencer Museum's galleries.