Associate Professor

You are here: �鶹��ý College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Keith Leonard

Degrees: PhD, Stanford University
MA, UNC Chapel Hill
BA, English, Yale University
Languages Spoken: French
Bio: Keith D Leonard is the author of Fettered Genius: The African �鶹��ý Bardic Poet from Slavery to Civil Rights. His publications, presentations, and courses have revolved around his study of political consciousness in African �鶹��ý poetry and poetics and in hip-hop culture. His current interests include African �鶹��ýs artists in Paris, jazz in African �鶹��ý culture, and the evolving innovations of Afrofuturism. He is currently working on a book project entitled Black Avant-Gardism that explores the role of African �鶹��ý writers' collectives in the artistic innovations, public profiles, and cultural impact of contemporary African �鶹��ý poets.

See Also
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George Moses Horton Society for the Study of African �鶹��ý Poetry
Member (1998-present)

��Fettered Genius: The African �鶹��ý Bardic Poet from Slavery to Civil Rights. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006
"Postmodern Soul: The Innovative Nostalgia of Thomas Sayers Ellis,"��Contemporary Literature��56.2 (Summer 2015): 340-371.�� Winner of the L. S. Dembo prize for best article of the year.
“‘Which Me Will Survive’: Rethinking Identity, Reclaiming Audre Lorde.” �� Callaloo 35.3 (Summer 2012): 758-777��
"Yusef Komunyakaa's Blues: The Postmodern Music of Neon Vernacular" Callaloo 28.3 (Summer 2005): 825-849.
“Jazz in African �鶹��ý Literature” Blackwell’s Companion to African �鶹��ý Literature�� (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010): 286-301.��
“We Wear the Mask: The Making of An African �鶹��ý Poet” Cambridge History of African �鶹��ý Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011): 209-219.
“African �鶹��ý Women Poets and the Power of the Word.”�� Cambridge Companion to African �鶹��ý Women's Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 168-186.��
“Verse Center: A Special Issue on Multi-Ethnic Poetics” Melus 35.2 June 2010 (co-editor)
"His Vagabond Heart"��Poetry Foundation��https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/157182/his-vagabond-heart

Contribution to Poetry Foundation podcast on the career of Langston Hughes.February 19, 2007.

"" for the Arlingron Public Library, April 29. 2021

��“Touching Dark Matter: Afrofuturism’s Body of Knowledge” at the History Seminar on Contemporary Science, Technology, and Culture, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, October 17, 2019
“‘Black Is…An’ Black Ain’t’: Twenty-First Century African �鶹��ý Poetics” at Duquesne University, October 3, 2018
“Experimental Blackness” at Theorizing Black Literature Now Conference at �� Rutgers University, February 12, 2016
"Blackness as Form, Blackness as Innovation," as Visiting Faculty at an NEH Institute, Don't Deny My Voice, National Endowment for the Humanities, University of Kansas. (July 29, 2015)

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