Office: 432 EPB Phone: 319-335-0317 E-Mail: Fredrick-Woodard@uiowa.edu Selected Publications/Projects Courses

Fredrick Woodard

African American Literature

Fredrick Woodard is an intellectual historian of American and African American cultures. His research interests encompass African American life and literature as they demonstrate influences of intellectual ideas from the Colonial periods to the present. In recent years, Woodard has been researching a comparative study of slavery of Africans in the Western world and slavery of Africans in the Eastern world. He has conducted studies of the slave trade through Tanzania, East Africa to the Middle East and India. Having traveled and conducted research in several countries, Woodard is now concentrating on compiling data and preparing interested undergraduate and graduate students to conduct further research. Woodard believes that the African Diaspora to the East has been going on for at least 5,000 years and that the African presence in the East extended far into Western Europe before the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The results of Woodard's comparative study will be published in conjunction with the work of colleagues in East Africa and India.
 
Woodard is also a poet and a visual artist. In this capacity, he has recently published a book, Reasons to Dream. The book also contains the artwork of Shari Davis. As a visual artist, Woodard has exhibited his work in the US and abroad.
 
As both a scholar and artist, Woodard has produced two documentary videos: "Chole Island: From Slavery to Freedom," and Reasons to Dream." He also produced and directed ten video productions for civic development in Tanzania, under the auspices of the United States Information Agency.