The Religion & Culture Web Forum
February 2008
Contributor Biography
The Preacher in the Text:
Zora Neale Hurston and the Homiletics of Literature
M. Cooper Harriss is a PhD student in Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School and managing editor of the journal ETHICS, published by the University of Chicago Press. He holds a B.A. from Washington & Lee University, an M.A. from the University of Chicago’s Division of Social Sciences, and an M.A.R. from Yale Divinity School. His dissertation concerns the viability of religious thought in understanding Ralph Ellison’s writings and worldview. This essay stems from his secondary research interest in the convergences of preaching and literary studies. In spring quarter 2008, Mr. Harriss will teach a seminar, “Preachers and Preaching in American Literature,” at the University of Chicago as part of the Divinity School’s “Border Crossing” initiative in ministry studies.
Dolan Hubbard is professor and chair of the Department of English and Language Arts at Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland. He previously held a joint appointment in English and African American Studies at the University of Georgia. A graduate of Catawba College, he earned his M.A. at the University of Denver and his Ph.D. in English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
A former editor of The Langston Hughes Review, Hubbard is author of The Sermon and the African American Literary Imagination (University of Missouri Press, 1994). He is editor of Recovered Writers/ Recovered Texts: Race, Class, and Gender in Black Women’s Literature (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997) and is a member of the Editorial Board of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (University of Missouri Press, 2001). He has also edited "The Souls of Black Folk": One Hundred Years Later (University of Missouri Press, 2003).
In April 2004, he was elected for a third two-year term as President
of the Langston Hughes Society. He has also served with the Modern Language
Association and South Atlantic Association of Departments of English,
and is a past president of the College Language Association (1994-96),
the nation’s pre-eminent organization of primarily African American scholars
of languages and literature.
The Religion and Culture Web Forum comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Persons seeking to copy or use this material must obtain permission from the Divinity School. 1025 East 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. (773) 702-8230.
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