RH 101
19th century U.S. Literature, African American Literature, Visual Culture Studies, Media Studies
The representation of U.S. slavery in word and image
Dr. Kya Mangrum teaches courses in U.S. literature, focusing on the unique contributions of writers of color, particularly African American and Indigenous writers of the long nineteenth-century. Dr. Mangrum earned her PhD in English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was also awarded a two-year postdoc at Cornell University where she was able to continue her study of the relationship between U.S. slavery, narrative, and photography. Dr. Mangrum is currently revising her first book manuscript, How Deep and Dark: Slavery, Photography, and the Limits of Narrative, a study which explores how the convergence of photography and immersive visual technologies during the long nineteenth-century led to the development of the immersive slave narrative, a sub-genre of the conventional slave narrative. In How Deep and Dark, Dr. Mangrum argues that the immersive slave narrative anticipated the goals and effects of not only film, but also immersive narration, transforming how formerly enslaved people’s stories were written, read, circulated, and re-produced.