Biography of Joanne M. Braxton, Ph.D.

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Joanne M. “Jodi” Braxton is the Frances L. and Edwin L. Cummings Professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Her writings include Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition (Temple University Press, 1989), Sometimes I Think of Maryland (Sunbrury Press, 1977), a collection of poetry, and the play, Crossing Deep River: A Ritual Drama in Three Movements, among other works. Originally published in the influential Journal of Black Poetry in 1969, Braxton is known as a performer of black poetry, including her own work, and especially for her 1970’s collaborations with avante garde jazz musician Marion Brown.

Braxton received her undergraduate degree in Theatre and Literature of Social Change from Sarah Lawrence College and her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. She has been a member of the faculty of the College of William and Mary since 1980. From 1998-2002, she was a Trustee of Sarah Lawrence College.

Braxton edited Wild Women in the Whirlwind: the Contemporary Renaissance in Afra-American Writing (Rutgers University Press, 1989), The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar (University of Virginia Press, 1993) The Maya Angelou ģI Know Why the Caged Bird Singsī Reader (Oxford University Press, 1999) and Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery and Memory (Lit Verlag: Muenster, Germany, 2004).

Professor Braxton currently edits the multi-volume Women Writers of Color Biography Series for the Praeger Publishing Group, and she continues to write and publish poetry. Above all, she feels that the experimental ensemble theatre piece Crossing a Deep River: A Ritual Drama in Three Movements is her most creative, complex and her most important work. In 2005, it has been chosen for the Frank Silvera Readers’ Theatre Series of New Plays presented by the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She is currently working on two new plays.

Braxton has served as a Mellon Scholar at the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women and as artist in residence at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She has been a Danforth Fellow and a member of the Michigan Society of Fellows. In addition, she has received numerous awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award, the William and Mary Alumni Teaching Fellowship and The Outstanding Virginia Educator Award from the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia. She has also received an Oni Award from the Black Women’s International Congress, the Umoja Humanitarian Award from Umoja, Inc., and an Alumni Achievement Award from Sarah Lawrence College.

In May 2000, she convened Monuments of the Black Atlantic: History, Memory and Politics, an international conference, in her capacity as director of The Middle Passage Project at The College of William and Mary. A former Fulbright scholar, Braxton has traveled in West Africa, and lectured widely in the United States, as well as in Cuba, Brazil, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. At the same time, she remains involved in numerous community-based activities on the local level.

Portfolio

Excerpts

Video

Professor Joanne Braxton in class [Quicktime]

Awards

The Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award [PDF]

Book Reviews

Press

Writings