Hazel Carby

{{Short description|American academic (born 1948)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{BLP sources|date=January 2011}} {{Infobox academic | honorific_prefix =  | name = Hazel V. Carby | honorific_suffix = | image = | image_size = | alt = | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | birth_name = Hazel Vivian Carby | birth_date = {{birth date and age|df=y|1948|01|15}} | birth_place = Okehampton, Devon, UK | death_date =  | death_place = | death_cause = | region = | nationality = | citizenship = | residence = | other_names = | occupation = | period = | known_for = | home_town = | title = | boards =  | spouse = Michael Denning | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | awards =  | website = | education = | alma_mater = Portsmouth Polytechnic, <br />London University, <br />Birmingham University | thesis_title = | thesis_url = | thesis_year = | school_tradition = | doctoral_advisor = | academic_advisors = | influences =  | era = | discipline = English | sub_discipline = African American studies, American studies | workplaces = Wesleyan University, <br />Yale University | doctoral_students =  | notable_students =  | main_interests = | notable_works = | notable_ideas = | influenced =  | signature = | signature_alt = | signature_size = | footnotes = }} '''Hazel Vivian Carby''' (born 15 January 1948 in Okehampton, Devon)<ref>{{cite web|last=Tsakanias |first=Caroline |date=4 August 2018 |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/carby-hazel-v-1948/ |title=Hazel V. Carby (1948– ) |publisher=BlackPast.org |access-date=9 June 2023}}</ref> is Professor Emerita of African American Studies and of American Studies. She served as Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University.

== Early life and education == Hazel Carby was born to Jamaican and Welsh parents in Okehampton, Devon, UK, on 15 January 1948. She earned a BA degree in English and history from Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1970, then a PGCE in 1972, at the Institute of Education, London University. She taught high school from 1972 to 1979, then went back to university, at Birmingham University Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, where she gained a M.A (1979) and a Ph.D. (1984).<ref>[https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/carby-hazel-1948 "Carby, Hazel 1948–"], Encyclopedia.com.</ref>

== Career == In 1981, Carby was appointed as a lecturer in the English Department at Yale University (1981–82), after which she taught English at Wesleyan University (1982–89), and rejoined Yale University in 1989. She is now Yale's Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://afamstudies.yale.edu/people/hazel-carby|title=Hazel Carby |publisher=Department of African American Studies |access-date=29 December 2018}}</ref> Her teaching focuses on race, gender and sexuality in Caribbean and diasporic culture and literature; in transnational and postcolonial literature and theory; in representations of the black female body; and in genres of science fiction.<ref name=":0" />

One of her contributions to African Diaspora studies came with her first book, ''Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist'' (1987). ''Reconstructing Womanhood'' offers studies on black female writers including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Anna Cooper, and Ida B. Wells, among others. Carby followed this book with ''Race Men: The Body and Soul of Race, Nation, and Manhood'' (1998), a six-essay collection of critiques on historical sites of black masculinity. Her first chapter, "Souls Of Black Men", is a critique of the gender bias in W. E. B. Du Bois' seminal work ''The Souls of Black Folk'' (1903). Carby argues that double consciousness is an erasure of Black female subjectivity. She does not question the importance of this text in black scholarship; she recognizes that because of the crucial status of Du Bois and ''Souls'' it is important that she undertakes this critique. After ''Race Men'', she penned ''Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America'' (1999). In 2019 she published, to wide critical acclaim, an autobiographical account of the B''ritish Empire: Imperial Intimacies : A Tale of Two Islands'' (2019). Carby has lectured at colleges and universities worldwide including the University of Notre Dame, Stanford University, the University of Paris, and the University of Toronto.

Carby serves on the advisory board of the academic journals ''Differences'', ''New Formations'' and ''Signs''.<ref>{{Project MUSE|47|type=journal}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=http://signsjournal.org/about-signs/masthead/|title=Masthead|date=22 August 2012|work=Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society|access-date=23 August 2017}}</ref>

==Awards== Carby's 2019 book ''Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands'' (Verso) won the British Academy's 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.thebookseller.com/news/carbys-exceptional-history-british-empire-scoops-25000-nayef-al-rodhan-prize-1223438|title=Carby's 'exceptional' history of British Empire scoops £25,000 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize|work=The Bookseller|first=Katherine|last= Cowdrey|date=27 October 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/article-detail/hazel-v-carby-wins-nayef-al-rodhan-prize/|title=Hazel V Carby wins Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize|first=Lucy |last=Nathan|date=28 October 2020}}</ref>

==Personal life== Carby married fellow Yale professor Michael Denning on 29 May 1982.

==Bibliography== ===Books=== * ''Multicultural Fictions'', Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, 1980. {{ISBN|9780704405059}}, {{OCLC|35622246}} * ''Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist''. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. {{ISBN|9780195041644}}, {{OCLC|489583830}}<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Keller |first1=Frances Richardson |title=Hazel V. Carby. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press. 1987. Pp. 223. $19.95 |journal=The American Historical Review |date=June 1989 |volume=94 |issue=3 |page=875 |doi=10.1086/ahr/94.3.875 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |id={{ProQuest|1311726639}} |last1=Johnson |first1=Cheryl |title=Review of ''Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist'' by Hazel Carby (Book Review) |journal=Discourse |volume=12 |issue=2 |date=Spring 1990 |pages=179 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Conn |first1=Peter |title=Review of Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist |journal=The Modern Language Review |date=1991 |volume=86 |issue=3 |pages=702–703 |id={{ProQuest|1293730032}} |doi=10.2307/3731050 |jstor=3731050 |url=http://digitale-objekte.hbz-nrw.de/storage2/2015/11/04/file_1/6495624.pdf }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stripes |first1=James D. |title=Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. |journal=Black American Literature Forum |date=1990 |volume=24 |issue=4 |pages=815–820 |doi=10.2307/3041806|jstor=3041806 |url=http://digitale-objekte.hbz-nrw.de/storage2/2015/11/04/file_1/6495624.pdf }}</ref> * ''Race Men: The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures''. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1998. {{ISBN|9780674745582}}, {{OCLC|984382678}}<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ross |first1=Marlon Bryan |title=Race Men (review) |journal=Modernism/Modernity |date=2000 |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=313–315 |doi=10.1353/mod.2000.0045 |s2cid=145606558 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Morgan |first1=William M. |title=Race Men (review) |journal=American Literature |date= 1 December 1999 |volume=71 |issue=4 |pages=820–821 |id={{Project MUSE|1447}} }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Boamah-Wiafe |first1=Daniel |title=Race Men (review) |journal=Biography |date=2000 |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=403–407 |doi=10.1353/bio.2000.0003 |jstor=23540144 |s2cid=161838537 }}</ref> * ''Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America''. London and New York: Verso, 1999. {{ISBN|978-1859848845}} {{OCLC|851741402}} * ''Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands''. London: Verso, 2019. {{ISBN|9781788735094}}, {{OCLC|1099544754}}

===Selected articles===

* "Figuring the future in Los(t) Angeles". ''Comparative American Studies'', 1.1 (2003): 19–34. * "What is This 'Black' in Irish Popular Culture?" ''European Journal of Cultural Studies'', 4.3 (2001): 325–349. * "Can the Tactics of Cultural Integration Counter the Persistence of Political Apartheid? Or, The Multicultural Wars, Part Two". In Austin Sarat (ed.), ''Race, Law and Culture: Reflections on Brown v. Board of Education''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 221–28. * "National Nightmares: The Liberal Bourgeoisie and Racial Anxiety". In Herbert W. Harris, Howard C. Blue and Ezra E. Griffith (eds), ''Racial and Ethnic Identity: Psychological Development and Creative Expression''. New York: Routledge, 1995. 173–91. * "Race and the Academy: Feminism and the Politics of Difference". In Isabel Caldeira (ed.), ''O Canone Nos Estudos Anglo-Americanos''. Coimbra, Portugal: Livraria Minerva, 1994. 247–53. * {{"'}}Hear My Voice, Ye Careless Daughters': Narratives of Slave and Free Women before Emancipation". In William L. Andrews (ed.), ''African American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays''. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. 59–76. * "The Multicultural Wars". ''Radical History Review'', 54.7 (1992): 7–18. * "Imagining Black Men: The Politics of Cultural Identity". ''Yale Review'', 80.3 (1992): 186–97. * "Policing the Black Woman's Body in an Urban Context". ''Critical Inquiry'', 18.4 (1992): 738–55. * "The Politics of Fiction, Anthropology, and the Folk: Zora Neale Hurston". In Michael Awkward (ed.), ''New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 71–93. * "Re-inventing History/Imagining the Future". ''Black American Literature Forum'', 20.2 (1989): 381–87. * "Proletarian or Revolutionary Literature: C. L. R. James and the Politics of the Trinidadian Renaissance". ''South Atlantic Quarterly'', 87 (1988): 39–52. * "Ideologies of Black Folk: The Historical Novel of Slavery". In Deborah E. McDowell and Arnold Rampersad (eds), ''Slavery and the Literary Imagination''. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. 125–43. * "The Canon: Civil War and Reconstruction". ''Michigan Quarterly Review''. 28.1 (1989): 35–43. * "It Jus Be's Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues". ''Radical America'', 20 (1987): 9–22. * {{"'}}On the Threshold of Woman's Era': Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality in Black Feminist Theory". ''Critical Inquiry'', 12.1 (1985): 262–77. * "Schooling in Babylon". ''The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in Seventies Britain''. London: Hutchinson, 1982. 182–211. * "White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood". ''The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in Seventies Britain''. London: Hutchinson, 1982. 212–235.

=== Other work ===

* "[https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n02/hazel-v.-carby/the-limits-of-caste The Limits of Caste]". ''London Review of Books''. Vol. 43, No. 2 · 21 January 2021. Related interview for the LRB Podcast [https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/lrb-conversations/the-colour-line-in-the-americas here.]

==References== <references />

== External links == {{wikiquote}} * [http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/carby/ Bio at Stanford] * [http://www.yale.edu/wgss/faculty/carby-h.html/ Bio from Yale University] * [http://www.theminnesotareview.org/journal/ns70/interview_carby.shtml/ Interview from The Minnesota Review]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carby, Hazel}} Category:Black studies scholars Category:American Marxists Category:African-American feminists Category:American feminists Category:Marxist feminists Category:Wesleyan University faculty Category:Yale University faculty Category:Living people Category:1948 births Category:Alumni of the UCL Institute of Education Category:British feminists Category:Black British women academics Category:British women academics Category:Black British academics Category:African-American historians Category:American gender studies academics Category:American women historians Category:20th-century American essayists Category:British emigrants to the United States Category:21st-century African-American academics Category:21st-century American academics