Department of English

Noelle Morrissette

Email: namorris@uncg.edu
Office: MHRA 3135

Education

Ph.D. Yale University-2002
M.Phil. Yale University-1997
M.A. Yale University-1995
B.A. University of Massachusetts at Amherst-1992

Research Interests

Dr. Morrissette’s interests include African American and American literature and culture, inclusive of Black popular culture, visual and sound arts, and literary history. She’s broadly interested in poetry and poetics, biography and autobiography, gender and sexuality, and law and literature as approaches to literary study. Dr. Morrissette also has a background in African and Caribbean literatures.

Biography

Noelle Morrissette, Program Director of African American and African Diaspora Studies and
Associate Professor of English, is the author of James Weldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapes
(University of Iowa Press, 2013) and the editor of New Perspectives on James Weldon Johnson’s
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (University of Georgia Press, 2017). She is a proud
graduate of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (B.A.), and completed her graduate
degrees in African Studies (M.A.) and African American Studies and English literature (Ph.D.) at
Yale University. She is the recipient, most recently, of an H. D. fellowship in American literature
at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and a Lillian Gary Taylor
visiting fellowship at the University of Virginia Special Collections for her forthcoming book
about James Weldon Johnson’s close friend, the Virginia poet Anne Spencer.

Selected Publications

• James Weldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapes, 1900-1938. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013.
• Juang, Richard, and Noelle Morrissette, Eds. Encyclopedia of Africa and the Americas: History, Culture and Politics. 3 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2008.
• Introduction and Note on the Text. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Other Writings, by James Weldon Johnson. Barnes and Noble Classics Edition. New York: Fine Creative Media, 2007. xv-xli.
• “‘Both the Law and Its Transgression’: Toni Morrison’s Paradise and Post-BlackFeminism.” Cultural Sites of Critical Insight: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and African American and Native American Women’s Writings. Ed. Christa Davis Acampora. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2007. 139-157.
• “‘Past Performances of the Negro’”: James Weldon Johnson’s Black Manhattan.”Obsidian III: Black Literature in Review5.2 (2004): 151-168.
• “New Perspectives on James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” (2017)

Awards and Honors

• Lillian Gary Taylor Visiting Fellowship in American Literature, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections, University of Virginia. Summer 2014.
• Linda Arnold Carlisle Research Grant, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2013-2014.
• Marc C. Friedlaender Faculty Excellence Award, English Department, UNCG, 2012-2013, 2008-2009.
• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship Endowment, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, 2009-2010.
• Donald C. Gallup Fellowship in American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, 2009-2010.

Links

James Weldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapes

Bookshelf

Anne Spencer between Worlds

by Noelle Morrissette

James Wheldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapes

Book by Noelle Morrissette