Trudier Harris, University Distinguished Research Professor of English at the University of Alabama, received the Clarence C. Cason Award in Nonfiction Writing from the journalism department at the university for her body of work on women and Black southern writers.
Professor Harris is the author or editor of more than two dozen books including Martin Luther King Jr., Heroism, and African American Literature (University of Alabama Press, 2014), The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South (Louisiana State University Press, 2009), and Summer Snow: Reflections From a Black Daughter of the South (Beacon Press, 2003).
Before joining the faculty at the University of Alabama, Professor Harris taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Earlier in her career, she was the first tenured African American faculty member at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She was a member of the English department faculty there from 1973 to 1979.
Dr. Harris is a magna cum laude graduate of Stillman College in Alabama. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.