Faculty
Professor
Laurence Prescott
Dr. Prescott (Ph.D., Indiana University-Bloomington) teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, especially on Spanish American literature, Latin American culture and civilization, and Afro-Latin American literature and culture. Before joining the department in 1990, he taught at the University of Kentucky.
During 1993-1994 he held a visiting appointment at the University of New Mexico. As a graduate student he was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Scholarship to research and study the literature of Colombia’s writers of African descent. Subsequently, he received a PRA Fellowship from the Organization of American States and a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to research a book on the poet Jorge Artel. He also received a Fulbright travel fellowship and an Endowed Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities from the Penn State University.
Dr. Prescott’s research interests include modern and contemporary Latin American literature, Afro-Hispanic literature and culture, and Colombian and Caribbean literatures, with particular attention to poetry and non-fiction prose. He is the author of Candelario Obeso y la iniciación de la poesía negra en Colombia (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1985) and Without Hatreds or Fears: Jorge Artel and the Struggle for Black Literary Expression in Colombia (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000), which was recognized as a Choice 2001 “Outstanding Academic Title.”
His articles have appeared in Revista Iberoamericana, Crítica Hispánica, Afro-Hispanic Review, Callaloo and other journals, and he has essays in Contemporary Literature in the African Diaspora (León, Spain: Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Universidad de Salamanca, 1997), Colombia: Literatura y Cultura del siglo XX ([Washington, D.C.]: Organización de los Estados Americanos, 1994) and other books. For his contributions to Colombian literature and nationality, the Asociación de Escritores de la Costa (Bolívar and Cartagena) conferred upon him an Honorary Life Membership (2002).
His current book project, a study of African American life and culture in Spanish American travel writings on the United States published between 1880 and 1960, uses postcolonial theory and criticism to deconstruct reactions and attitudes of Spanish American travelers (e.g., José Martí, Victoria Ocampo, Luis Alberto Sánchez, and Manuel Zapata Olivella) to the presence, conditions, treatment, and activities of African American peoples. He is also completing a critical bibliography of Afro-Colombian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Dr. Prescott’s recent publications include “Journeying through Jim Crow: Spanish American Travelers in the United States during the Age of Segregation,” Latin American Research Review (2007); “Brother to Brother: The Friendship and Literary Correspondence of Manuel Zapata Olivella and Langston Hughes,” Afro-Hispanic Review (2006); and “Voces del litoral recóndito: tres poetas de la costa Pacífica de Colombia,” Revista de Estudios Colombianos (2006), reprinted (and slightly revised) in “Chambacú, la historia la escribes tú”: ensayos sobre cultura afrocolombiana, ed. Lucía Ortiz (Frankfurt; Madrid: Vervuert/Iberoamericana, 2007). Currently, he is president of the Afro-Latin/American Research Association (ALARA), co-editor of the journal PALARA, associate editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Revista de Estudios Colombianos.
