Adena Spingarn

Adena Spingarn holds a Mellon Fellowship and teaches in the English department in 2012-14. She is currently at work on a book project, “Uncle Tom in the American Imagination,” which examines Uncle Tom’s transformation in American cultural understanding from a heroic Christ figure in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to a submissive race traitor. A contributor to Theatre Survey, Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the National Era, The Root, and Vogue, her current writing and teaching focus on 19th- and 20th-century American literature and cultural history, with a special emphasis on African American literature and literary history.