Erica Edwards of the University of California Riverside Wins Prestigious Book Prize

Erica Edwards, an associate professor of English at the University of California at Riverside, has been selected to receive the prestigious Williams Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association. The prize is awarded to an outstanding study of African American literature and culture. Dr. Edwards was honored for her book Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). She will receive the award at the Modern Language Association’s annual convention in Chicago next month.

Dr. Edwards is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta. She holds a Ph.D. from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

William Sanders Scarborough, a scholar of the classics, was a born a slave in 1852. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Oberlin College in Ohio and later served as president of Wilberforce University in Ohio. He was the first African American member of the Modern Language Association.