Hollis Robbins
Academic Appointments
Humanities Faculty, The Peabody Institute, The Johns Hopkins University. 2006-present.
Associate Research Scholar, JHU Center for Africana Studies, 2009-present.
Assistant Professor of English, Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi. 2004-2006.
Director/Managing Editor, Black Periodical Literature Project, Harvard University, W.E.B. Du Bois Center for Afro-American Studies. 2003-2006.
Visiting Research Collaborator, Princeton University. 2003-2004.
Education
Ph.D. English, Princeton University, 2003.
M.A. English, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1998.
M.P.P. Harvard University, The John F. Kennedy School of Government, 1990.
B.A. The Writing Seminars, The Johns Hopkins University, 1983.
Areas of Specialization
African-American Literature
Nineteenth-Century American/British/Transatlantic Literature
Poetry, Poetics, and Lyric Forms
Aesthetic Theory/Law and Literature/Film
Books
Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy, Or, Shadows Uplifted. Penguin Classics. Introduction and notes. 2010.
The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Hollis Robbins. New York: W.W. Norton. 2006.
The Selected Writings of William Wells Brown: Using His “Strong, Manly Voice.” Eds. Hollis Robbins and Paula Garrett. Oxford University Press. 2006.
In Search of Hannah Crafts: Critical Essays on The Bondwoman’s Narrative. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Hollis Robbins. New York: Basic Books. 2003.
Book Projects
Penguin Portable Nineteenth Century African American Women Writers (under contract, with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.).
The African American Sonnet Tradition.
Being Postal: Communication and the Mailman in Modern Literature.
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
“William Wordsworth’s ‘We Are Seven’ and the First British Census.” ELN 48.2, Fall/Winter 2010.
“Fugitive Mail: Henry ‘Box’ Brown and Antebellum Postal Politics.” American Studies 50:1/2 (2009).
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Matter of Influence.” History Now, A Quarterly Journal, Gilder Lehrman Institute, Issue 16, June 2008.
“The Deliverance of Henry ‘Box’ Brown.” Johns Hopkins Center for Africana Studies Working Paper Series, 2008. www.jhu.edu/africana/news/working_papers/index.html
“A Menstrual Lesson for Girls: Maria Edgeworth’s ‘The Purple Jar.’” Menstruation: A Cultural History. Eds. Andrew Shail and Gillian Howie. Palgrave, UK, 2005.
“The Emperor’s New Critique.” New Literary History 34.4 (2003): 659-675.
“Hannah’s Bleak House: Crafting The Bondwoman’s Narrative.” In Search of Hannah Crafts. Eds. Gates and Robbins. New York: Basic Books, 2003. 71-86.
“Black Arts and Crafts: Literary Alchemy in The Bondwoman’s Narrative.” Academic Companion to The Bondwoman’s Narrative, Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., XanEdu Press, 2002.
“Flushing Away Sentiment: Water Politics in The Custom of the Country.” Edith Wharton’s Custom of the Country. Eds. Isabelle Boof-Vermesse and Anne Ullmo-Michel. Paris: Ellipses, 2000.
“Government Regulation of Gambling Advertising: Replacing Vice Prevention with Consumer Protection” (co-author, Michael B. Rothman). The Journal of Gambling Studies 7.4 (Winter 1991): 337-360.
Academics Talks, Panels, and Conference Papers
“Race, Racism, and Myths of Equality in the California Gold Rush (1848-1858).” Conference on Race, Radicalism, and Repression on the Pacific Coast and Beyond. University of Washington, May 2011.
“Putting Gender Aside: Teaching House of Mirth as a Financial Novel.” Association for Core Texts and Courses 17th Annual Conference, Yale University. April 2011.
“Teaching Frederick Douglass as a Master Rhetorician.” Association for Core Texts and Courses 16th Annual Conference, New Brunswick, NJ. April 2010.
“The Alien Postman in Modern American Fiction: Fitzgerald, Welty, Olson, Bukowski.” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900. February 2009.
“‘There are no gentlemen here’: Black Newspapers and the Structural Origins of Gold Rush Literature, 1848-1858.” WLA, Boulder Colorado, October 2008.
“Dracula, Deadlines, and Standard Time.” Johns Hopkins University Humanities Colloquium, October 2007.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin Reconsidered.” Panel Discussion with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Margo Jefferson, and Thelma Golden. New York Public Library, November 29, 2006.
Discussant/Responder, Prelsefannie Whitfield McDaniel, “Mothering Issues in Dorothy West’s The Wedding.” University Scholars Symposium, Jackson State University, 2005.
“Toward a Theory of Postal Narrative.” Narrative: An International Conference, Louisville, KY, 2005.
“Peopling the Nation: Sexuality and Fertility in Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly” MLA, San Diego, 2003.
“Legitimacy by Mail in Wilkie Collins.” Princeton Victorian Colloquium, 2003.
“Post Office Stories, or What’s in the Box?” Princeton Department of English “Works in Progress” Series, 2002.
“The Comic Figure of the Bureaucrat: Literary Heritage and Implications for Government Arts Policy.” Princeton Center for Arts and Cultural Policy, 2002.
“The Testimony of a Tax Collector: Bureaucracy, Spirit, and the (Scarlet) Letter.” Conference on Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC; 2000.
“Restrained by Position, Gender, and a Critic’s ‘Teeth and Claws’: Margaret Clephane Compton’s Irene.” Women Poets of the Romantic Era Conference, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1999.
“Containing Esther in the Anchorhold: A Popular and Unruly Role Model in the Ancrene Wisse.” 33rd International Conference on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, 1998.
“William Wordsworth, Tax Farmer/Stamp Distributor.” Romantics Colloquium, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1997.
“Crisis, War, and Public Opinion: The Media and Public Support for the President in Two Phases of the Confrontation in the Persian Gulf” (Primary Author: Professor Richard Brody, Stanford University Department of Political Science); presented by Professor Brody at the SSRC conference on Media and Foreign Policy, 1991.
Dissertation Supervised
Tara Bynum, “‘The Marks of a New Birth’: Towards a New Reading of Eighteenth-Century African American Literature” (Johns Hopkins Univ. Department of English, 2008)
Book Reviews, Articles
Adam Goodheart 1861 Whitewashing Civil War History
Jessica Anya Blau Drinking Closer to Home
Teaching
Peabody Institute
PY 260-115 Introduction to Humanities.
PY 260-211 Advanced Liberal Studies: 19th Century Novel to Film.
PY 260-222 Introduction to Interpretation.
PY 260-226 Advanced Liberal Studies: Modern Drama.
PY 260-228 Literary Trials: Justice in Black and White.
PY 260-232 World Film.
PY 260-312 Literature of Imprisonment.
PY 260-313 Bible as Literature.
PY 260-316 20th Century Aesthetics and Politics.
Johns Hopkins University
AS 362-200 African American Poetry and Poetics (2008, 2009, 2010).
AS 360-133 Great Books at Homewood (2009, 2010).
Grants, Fellowships, Awards
Peabody Faculty Development Grants, 2009, 2010
W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research Fellowship, 2006.
Mellon Foundation: Cultures and Communities Seminar Participant, 2004-2006.
Millsaps Faculty Travel Grants, 2005, 2006.
McCosh Award for Distinguished Teaching, Princeton Department of English, 2003.
Princeton University Center for Human Values Graduate Prize Fellowship, 2002-2003.
Princeton Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Dissertation Fellowship, 2001-2002.
Dean’s Fund for Scholarly Travel Grant, 2000.
University of Colorado, Boulder, Dean’s Fund for Scholarly Travel Grant, 1998.
Stanford University, Institute for Communication Research Fellowship, 1991-1992.
