{Home > People > Faculty > Senate Faculty > Riché Richardson}---------------

Riché Richardson Associate Professor of English

Ph.D. Duke University, Department of English, 1998
Certificate African and African American Studies, 1998
B.A. Spelman College, English Department, 1993
Minors in Philosophy and Women's Studies

Professor Richardson is a Southerner who was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama. She joined the English Department faculty at UC Davis in the fall of 1998. Among her interests are African American literature, including African American literary theory, criticism, biography and autobiography; American literature; Southern studies, including Southern literature, Southern history and black Southerners; black studies; critical theory; cultural studies; gender studies, including masculinities; and pedagogy. She was a coordinator of Blackness in Global Contexts, a national conference sponsored by the African American and African Studies Program at UC Davis in March, 2002. More recently, she served as program coordinator for the Society for the Study of Southern Literature conference "Labor, Literature and the U.S. South" held in March, 2006 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her scholarly essays have appeared in journals such as American Literature, The Mississippi Quarterly, and the Forum for Modern Language Studies. Her published and developing essays treat topics such as the role of the South in formations of race and masculinity in the African American context, African American film, Southern rap, psychoanalysis, and global and diasporan perspectives in Southern studies. Her book entitled Black Masculinity and the U.S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta will be published in fall 2006 by the University of Georgia Press. She is the co-editor, with Jon Smith, of the new book series, The New Southern Studies, at the University of Georgia Press, whose advisory board includes Houston A. Baker, Jr., Tara McPherson, Trudier Harris, Scott Romine, Jennifer Greeson, and John T. Matthews. Professor Richardson regularly gives lectures and serves on panels at national conferences. She has given numerous lectures on campus, in addition to offering talks on professional development. Professor Richardson recently completed a two-year term on the Executive Council for the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, and also serves on that organization's Publication Committee. Most recently, she was elected to the Southern Literature Discussion Group in the Modern Language Association (2006-09). In addition to being a scholar, she is an artist who makes mixed-media appliqué art quilts. Her body of art work will be featured in an upcoming exhibition in Montgomery, Alabama, which will be accompanied by a catalog and site online. Professor Richardson's other interests include collecting Southern folk art and decorating her "Paris apartment" in Sacramento with a Southern folk and vintage twist.

HONORS, AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

• Southern Literature Discussion Group. Modern Language Association, 2006-09
• Society for the Study of Southern Literature. Executive Council, 2003-05
• Davis Humanities Institute Fellowship. The University of California , Davis , 2002-03
• Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. The Johns Hopkins University, 2001-02
• Faculty Development Award. University of California , Davis, Summer 2000
• New Faculty Research Grant. University of California , Davis, 1998-99
• Preparing Future Faculty Program Fellow. Duke University , 1997-98
• Graduate Scholars. Women's Studies Program. Duke University , 1996-98
• DeWitt Wallace Dissertation Year Fellowship. Duke University , 1996-97
• DeWitt Wallace Graduate Fellowship. Duke University , 1993-98

PUBLICATIONS

• "Black Masculinity and the U.S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta", the University of Georgia Press (book)
• "Black Renaissance/American Renaissance" (book manuscript in progress)
• "The Dirty South" (book manuscript in progress)
• "Charles Fuller's Southern Specter and the Geography of Black Masculinity," American Literature, 2005
• "Southern Turns," The Mississippi Quarterly, 2004
• "'A House Set Off from the Rest': Ralph Ellison's Rural Geography," Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2004
• "'The Birth of a Nation 'hood': Lessons from Thomas Dixon and D.W. Griffith to William Bradford Huie and The Klansman, O.J. Simpson's First Movie," The Mississippi Quarterly, 2002-03
• "A Symposium: New Souths," The Mississippi Quarterly (with Judith Jackson Fossett and Adam Gussow), The Mississippi Quarterly, 2002
• "When Black Men Are No Longer Obsolete and Dangerous But Still Single: Masculinity, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary African American Film" (essay under review)
• "The Revolt of William Bradford Huie" (essay in progress)
• "An Autobiographical Sketch on Becoming an Academic and Being One" (unpublished essay)

Email: rrichardson@ucdavis.edu