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Tessa Roynon

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Tessa Roynon
Academic Position:
Senior Research Fellow
College:
Rothermere American Institute
Research Interests:
North American literature, African American literature

Tessa Roynon is a specialist in modern North American literature. She is particularly interested in African American literature, and her recent publications have focused on the ways in which modern American writers engage with and revise ancient Greek and Roman culture

Her most recent book, The Classical Tradition in Modern American Fiction explores how modern American novelists ranging from Willa Cather and William Faulkner to Toni Cade Bambara and Percival Everett ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, for example in their representations of racial and/or ethnic politics and identities.

She is the author of two books on Toni Morrison: The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison (CUP 2012), and the monograph, Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition (OUP 2013), which was awarded the Toni Morrison Society Book Prize for best single-authored book in 2015. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on this author, including in the Journal of American Studies and African American Review.

Her co-edited projects include the essay collection, Global Ralph Ellison (2021), and a special issue of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition on the theme of 'Ovid and Identity in the Twenty-First Century'.

Recent Publications

  • The Classical Tradition in Modern American Fiction. In production at Edinburgh University Press. Scheduled publication date January 2021.
  • ‘Ellison and Literary Modernism’. Ralph Ellison in Context. Ed. Paul Devlin. Cambridge UP, forthcoming 2020.
  • Edited with Marc Conner. Global Ralph Ellison: transnational aesthetics and politics. Contracted to Peter Lang. Forthcoming, 2020.
  • Edited with Daniel Orrells. International Journal of the Classical Tradition 26.4 (2019). Special issue: ‘Ovid and Identity in the 21st Century’.
  • ‘Toni Morrison’. Oxford Bibliographies: Literary and Critical Theory. July 2017.
  • Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition: Transforming American Culture (Oxford University Press, Classical Presences 2013).
  • The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
# Title Description Contributor
1 The Modern American Novel: An Introduction

This lecture surveys the historical and cultural contexts of six important modern American...

Tessa Roynon
2 African American Literature: An Introduction

This lecture gives an overview of key writings by black American authors, beginning with the...

Tessa Roynon
3 Toni Morrison: An Introduction

This lecture surveys the life and work of one of America’s greatest novelists, Toni Morrison (...

Tessa Roynon