Jeanette Springer, visiting Fulbright lecturer in anthropology, is to give a talk titled “A Portrayal of Blacks in Selected Afro-centric Fiction” on Thursday, Feb. 22, at 7 p.m. in Social Sciences 016.
The event is part of the College's celebration of Black History Month.
Springer, a native of Antigua and resident of Barbados since 1974, will explore the work of such writers as Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid Jean Rhys, Joan Riley and Zora Neal-Hurston.
Springer is teaching two courses at Union, Contemporary Caribbean Women
Writers–offered in the fall and spring–and Women in Black Literature, which she is teaching this term.
Springer is head of the English department at Barbados Community College, where she teaches Chaucer and modern world literature. Her area of research interest and expertise,
Caribbean women's literature is what brought her to Union as Fulbright lecturer in Caribbean women's literature.
As a Fulbright scholar, Springer is encouraged to take courses, which she says allows her to research her “black cousins” from Africa, America, England, and Canada, as well as expand her general knowledge. In the fall she took French and photography and
this term she's taking a theater class (Voice for the Stage) and a creative writing class.
Springer says she loves teaching Caribbean writers and their work. “I like seeing people like me in literature,” she says. For most of the students the material is novel. “They seem to be enjoying it, since it's new to most of them.”