Stefan Wheelock

Portrait of Stefan Wheelock
Titles and Organizations

Associate Professor

Contact Information

Email: swheeloc@gmu.edu
Office: Horizon Hall 4214

Biography

Stefan Wheelock is an associate professor in the English department. He earned his PhD in English from Brown University in 2001. He specializes in the study of Atlantic history and culture with a specific focus on early African-British and African-American literatures. His teaching and research interests are late eighteenth century/early nineteenth century black antislavery writing with a particular emphasis on slave narrative autobiography, early black polemic, and their contributions to Atlantic political and intellectual currencies. His publications appear in A Companion to African American Studies (2004), published by Blackwell Press and in the Cambridge History of African American Literature (2010). He has an essay forthcoming entitled "Redemption, Historical Imagination, and Early Black Biographical Writing" to appear in African American Literature in Transition, Volume 2 published by Cambridge University Press. His other essays include "The Problem of Historical Consciousness in the Relation of African-American Studies to Modernity" and "Dividing a Nation; Uniting a People: African-American Literature and the Abolitionist Movement." He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled "Promises Lynched: Racial Terror, Religion, and the Post-Truth Foundations of the American Identity."

Selected Publications

Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic.  Charlottesville VA: University of Virginia Press, 2015.

“Dividing a Nation; Uniting a People: African-American Literature and the Abolitionist Movement.” Cambridge History of African-American Literature.” Eds. Maryemma Graham and Jerry W. Ward, Jr.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 66-90).

“The Problem of Historical Consciousness in the Relation of African-American Studies to  Modernity.” A Companion to African-American Studies.  Eds. Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Gordon.  (Malden MA: Blackwell Press, 2006, pp. 377-399).

 

Podcasts:

Interview on Early Black Intellectual Resistance. “With Good Reason.” (Interviewer, Sarah McConnell). Virginia Foundation for the Humanities/ National Public Radio. Summer 2019.

Interview for book, Barbaric Culture and Black Critique. (Interviewer, Adam McNeil). “New Books in African American Studies.”  Fall 2018.

 

Grants and Fellowships

Book finalist for the Albert J. Raboteau Prize in Africana Religions, American Academy of Religion (2017)

Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship.  (2004-2005)

Brown University Dissertation Fellowship.  (1999)

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant.  (1999)

Brown University Graduate Fellowship in Research.  (1994-1995)

Tougaloo College English Department Award for outstanding student in English and American literature.  (1993)

Woodrow Wilson Exchange Program to University of Washington, Seattle.  (1992)

United Negro College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Fellowship in English.  (1991)

Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society inductee, Tougaloo College chapter.  (1990).