The Tar Baby and the Tomahawk: Race and Ethnic Images in American Children's Literature, 1880-1939

About

Funding

The Tar Baby and the Tomahawk has been generously supported by:


Staff

Gerald Early, Co-Director

Gerald Early is the Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also heads the Children’s Studies program. He received his PhD in English Literature from Cornell University in 1982. He has written extensively on race and American culture, most recently in A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports (Harvard University Press, 2011); his essays have appeared in publications including the New York Times, Daedalus, Hungry Mind Review, and U.S. News and World Report. He has also edited a range of journals and anthologies, including the Best African American Fiction and Best African American Essays volumes for 2009 and 2010. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and currently serves on the Academy’s Council.

Amanda Gailey, Co-Director

Amanda Gailey is Assistant Professor of English and Fellow at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she teaches courses in American literature and digital humanities. She specializes in nineteenth-century American literature, book history, and digital humanities, and has published articles on Whitman, Dickinson, and digital editing. She is currently working on a book about how editing has helped shape the canon of American literature, and co-edits Scholarly Editing: The Journal of the Association of Documentary Editing.

D.B. Dowd, Contributing Editor

D.B. Dowd is a professor of art and American culture studies with expertise in the practice, theory, and history of illustration and a special interest in ethnic depiction in the fields of illustration and cartooning. He earned his MFA in Printmaking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1989 and has taught at Washington University in St. Louis since 1992, where he has been instrumental in the creation and growth of the Modern Graphic History Library. He co-edited the anthology Strips Toons and Bluesies: Essays in Comics and Culture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). His prints are in collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington; his work as an editorial illustrator has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker magazine, the Wall Street Journal and other publications. His illustrated journal Spartan Holiday debuts in 2011-12.

Katharine Capshaw Smith, Contributing Editor

Katharine Capshaw Smith is Associate Professor of Children’s Literature and African American Literature at the University of Connecticut, where she also received her PhD in English in 2000. Her award-winning Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance (Indiana University Press, 2004) established her as an authority on that subject, and her forthcoming book analyzes the role of childhood within photographic civil rights texts. She is also the Editor of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly and Director of the Diversity Studies in American Culture Minor at the University of Connecticut.


Other staff members of the archive include:

  • Wendy Love Anderson, Editorial Assistant, 2010-
  • Karin Dalziel, Digital Resources Designer, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, 2010-
  • Sabrina Ehmke Sergeant, Assistant Editor, 2010-2011
  • Perry Trolard, 2006-2011, Assistant Director of Humanities Digital Workshop, Washington University in St. Louis
  • Laura Weakly, Metadata Encoding Specialist, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, 2010-

Student transcribers and encoders:

  • Bartell M. Berg
  • Jennifer Boka
  • Luciana Bonifazi
  • Joy Bracewell
  • Megan Bus
  • Tom Butcher
  • Jamin Casey
  • Jonathan Champion
  • Maria Chappell
  • Samantha Chesters
  • Sarah Cooper
  • Sami Dudar
  • Kathryn Foulk
  • Tiffany Frye
  • Vivian Giang
  • Rebecca Henderson
  • Jacqueline Hettel
  • Christopher L. Kolb
  • Sara Leimbach
  • Meagan Logsdon
  • Rosemary Luttrell
  • Dylan McCaugherty
  • Marcia McIntosh
  • Katherine McKenzie
  • Drew Mischnick
  • Maggie Moore
  • Kaytlyn Mulinix
  • Ashton Nicholson
  • Kyle Niehus
  • Carlos Paelinck
  • Blaine Petska
  • L. Michael Posey
  • Nicole Retzlaff
  • Justin Richards
  • Kalisa Schweitzer
  • Trey Shotroske
  • Julia Simpson
  • Laura Soderberg
  • Jon-Michael Sullivan
  • Daniel Sveen
  • Nate Tusa
  • Rebecca Vanderslice
  • Yanning Wang
  • Laura Watson
  • Desiree White
  • Marci Wiemer
  • Emily Witsell
  • Adam Wolfe