Office: EPB Phone: 319-335- E-mail: lena-hill@uiowa.edu Curriculum Vitae Courses

Lena Hill

20th-Century African-American Literature, Visual Media

I joined the English department and African American Studies program as an Assistant Professor in 2006. My teaching and research focus on twentieth century African American literature, American literature and drama, and American visual culture. I am particularly interested in the ways writers engage visual culture to characterize the complexity of American identity. My current book project examines the role of visual art aesthetics in African-American literature from 1900 to 1952. My other publications reflect the focus of this monograph. I co-authored Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: A Reference Guide (Greenwood, 2008), and my article, “The Visual Art of Invisible Man: Ellison’s Portrait of Blackness” is forthcoming in American Literature. “Mona Lisa Smiles: Composing New Portraits of Black Women during the Harlem Renaissance” is forthcoming in the collection Art Objects and Women’s Words: Women’s Ekphrastic Writing.