Martha Patterson, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Coordinator of Prestigious Fellowships & Scholarships
Office: Carnegie Hall 206
Phone: (618) 537-6881
Email: mhpatterson@mckendree.edu
Education
Ph.D., English, University of Iowa (1996)
M.A., Literary Studies, University of Iowa (1990)
B.A., English, Carleton College (1988)
Publications
Books:
Cambridge Companion to Fiction of the Harlem Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, Edited with an Introduction and a chapter by Martha H. Patterson. Approved by Syndics, 2026.
The Harlem Renaissance Weekly: Reading the New Negro Movement in 1920s Black Newspapers, Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture Series, Cambridge University Press, 2025.
The New Negro: A History in Documents, 1887-1937. Edited with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with an Introduction by Martha H. Patterson, Princeton University Press, 2025.
Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895-1915. University of Illinois Press, 2005. Paperback version released 2008.
Reviewed in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Modernism/Modernity, Journal of Popular Culture, American Literary Realism, American Studies, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Journalism History, Journal of Women’s History, American Literature, Early Popular Visual Culture, Highly Recommended title by Choice.
The American New Woman Revisited: A Reader, 1894-1930. Edited and compiled with an Introduction by Martha H. Patterson. Rutgers University Press, 2008. (Simultaneous hard and paperback release).
Recommended title by Choice. Cited in over 100 monographs.
Articles:
“The New Woman,” Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000. Patricia A. Schechter, Editor, Proquest, 2026-27.
“McKay and Black Newspapers,” in Claude McKay in Context. Gary Edward Holcomb, editor, Literature in Context Series, (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
“‘We Return Fighting’: The New Negro Comes of Age,” African American Literature in Transition, 1910-1920, Cambridge University Press. Accepted.
“Du Bois and the New Negro.” Little-Known Documents. PMLA, March 2023.
“The Newest New Nativism.” Los Angeles Review of Books. The Philosophical Salon. September 22, 2019.
“Feminine Monstrosity in the 2016 Presidential Campaign.” Los Angeles Review of Books. The Philosophical Salon. September 25, 2016.
Reprinted in The Philosophical Salon: Speculations, Reflections, Interventions. Edited by Michael Marder and Patricia Vieira, Open Humanities Press, 2017.
“English Professors Aren’t Good for Much.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. 23 October, 2013.
“Fascist Parody and Wish Fulfillment: George Schuyler’s Periodical Fiction of the 1930s.” Journal of Modern Periodical Studies. September 2013.
“’Chocolate Baby, a Story of Ambition, Deception, and Success’: Refiguring the New Negro Woman in the Pittsburgh Courier.” The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film, 1890s-1930s, eds. Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco. University of Michigan Press, February 2011.
“Struggling to Keep Up: When It Comes to Many Digital Archives, Scholars at Small-Sized Institutions are the Have Nots.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Nov. 9, 2007.
“Incorporating the New Woman in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country.” Studies in American Fiction, 26.2, Autumn 1998, 213-236.
“Kin' o'rough jestice fer a parson": Pauline Hopkins and the Politics of Reconstructing History.” African American Review, 32.3, Fall 1998, 445-460.
“Remaking the Minstrel: Pauline Hopkins’s Peculiar Sam and the Formation of a Post-Reconstruction Black Subject.” Black Women Playwrights: Visions on the American Stage, ed. Carol P. Marsh-Lockett. Garland, 1998, 13-24.
Reviews:
Kathy Roberts Forde and Sid Bedingfield, Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. The Journal of African American History. Volume 108, no. 4. Fall 2023.
“Review of Cara A. Finnegan’s Making Photography Matter: A Viewer’s History from the Civil War to the Great Depression.” American History Review. June 2016.
“Beyond Empire: The New Woman at Home and Abroad.” Review of Holly Pyne Connor’s Off the Pedestal: New Women in the Art of Homer, Chase, and Sargent, Iveta Jusová’s The New Woman and the Empire and Mona L. Russell’s Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism, Education, and National Identity, 1863-1922. Journal of Women’s History. 21.1 Spring 2009.
"Review of Lisa Botshon and Meredith Goldsmith, eds. Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s." Legacy 21.2, 2004.
Invited Presentations
"The Harlem Renaissance Weekly: Reading the New Negro Movement in 1920's Black Newspapers," Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies, March 9, 2026.
“Mapping Era Bell Thompson: Ebony and the Popularization of a Pan-African Consciousness." BMRC, December 8, 2025.
“Mapping Era Bell Thompson: From the Jazz Age Prairie to Cold War Africa,” Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies, April 16, 2025.
“Charles Dana Gibson.” Commemoration Speech for Dedication of a Cultural Medallion at Gibson’s Home. Historical Landmarks Preservation Center, Historic Landmarks Preservation Center, New York City, NY, April 25, 2017.
“Feminism, Fascism, and the New Negro Woman.” SUNY-Buffalo, New Woman International Conference, Sept. 15-17, 2011.
"The American Experience in Narrative Literature." Seminar for High School Teachers, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway, March 30, 2011.
Invited Lecture. “American Studies Post 9-11.” 4th Annual Austrian Young Americanists Graduate Student Workshop. “American Studies in Europe Post-9/11: Is it All Different Now?” University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. October 8-10, 2010.
Invited Lecture. Recent Initiatives to Make U.S. High Schools, Colleges and Universities More Competitive. “Instituttseminar for Institutt for Fremmedspråk og Oversetting,” University of Agder, Hotel Norge, Kristiansand, September 8, 2010.
Invited Presentation
“The New Woman in the Rural Community and Beyond.” Annual Meeting 2013, Agricultural History Society, June 2013.
Selected Conference Presentations
“Saving the Black Man's Body and the White Man's Soul: Anti-Lynching Novels in the Black Press,” African American Intellectual History Society Conference, March 9-11, 2023.
“A Fighting Black Press,” Panel Organizer. “The Evolution of the New Negro,” Presenter. American Studies Association Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, October 11-14, 2021.
“The New Negro in Newspapers.” American Literature Association, May 23-26, 2019. Cancelled Due to Covid-19.
“The Harlem Renaissance Weekly,” MELUS, March 21-24, 2019.
“Bootlegging in the Black Press,” Criminal America: Reading, Studying and Teaching American Crime Fiction. American Literature Association, March 2-4, 2017.
"Harlem Renaissance Detective Fiction as Satire," Authenticity Project, a Symposium, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway, November 4-5, 2010.
"The Cat Man of Manhattan: Satire, Pulp Fiction, and the Harlem Renaissance." ASANOR/NACS, Norway and English Philology Department, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania Joint Conference Kaunas, September 23 – 26, 2010. “Cultures, Identities, and Languages in North-American Contexts.”
“Claiming Urban Space and Citizenship: The Underground Railroad, East St. Louis and Skid Row, LA.” American Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington D. C., November 2009.
“Newspaper Novels of the Harlem Renaissance.” Modernist Studies Association, Memphis, November 2008.
“The Forgotten Debate: Prohibition in New York's Black Press, 1915-33.” Modern Language Association Convention. Chicago, December 2007.
Selected Grants and Awards
Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) Summer Short-Term Fellowship, Summer 2025.
Hutchins Family Fellowship, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
Harvard University, Spring 2025.
NEH Summer Institute, “Making Modernism: Literature, Dance, and Visual Culture in Chicago, 1893-1955,” Summer 2022.
New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship, 2021.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award, McKendree University—dedicated
award to Dr. J.L. Simmons, professor of psychology, 2021.
Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow, Hutchins Fellowship at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University, 2020-2021.
NEH Summer Institute, “City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press,” Summer 2020.
Sabbatical, McKendree University, 2018-2019.
McKendree University Faculty Engagement Grant, 2018.
NEH Summer Institute, “Making Modernism: Literature and Culture in Twentieth-Century Chicago, 1893-1955.” Summer 2013.
Fulbright Research/Teaching Award to Norway, University of Agder, 2010-2011.
American Studies Community Partnership Grant, “Illinoistown: A Cultural History of East St. Louis,” 2008-2009.
Illinois Arts Council Grant Recipient, Charles Pace as Malcolm X Performance, Spring 2007.
