Hollis Robbins

Hollis Robbins, PhD is a member of the Humanities faculty at the Peabody Institute, where she has taught since 2006, and was Director of the Center for Africana Studies from 2014–17. Her work focuses on the intersection of 19th-century American and African American literature and the discourses of law, bureaucracy, and the press. She was from 2003 to 2006 the director/managing editor of the Black Periodical Literature Project at Harvard’s DuBois Institute and was the Principal Investigator on the “Visualizing the History of the Black Press in the United States” National Endowment of Humanities Office of Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant. She is currently a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in Durham, NC.

Robbins has edited or co-edited five books on 19th-century African American literature; the latest is the Penguin Portable African American Women Writers (July 2017). Others include the Penguin Classics edition of Frances E.W. Harper’s 1892 novel Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted; The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin, co-edited with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; In Search of Hannah Crafts, Essays on The Bondwoman’s Narrative, co-edited with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; and The Selected Works of William Wells Brown, co-edited with Paula Garrett.

Recent articles and book chapters include essays on Charles Chesnutt’s The House Behind the Cedars, on African American literature of the gold rush, and on the music of Django Unchained. Robbins holds a PhD in English from Princeton University, an MPP (Master in Public Policy) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a BA in the Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins.