Mecca Sullivan Awarded the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize

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We are pleased to announce that our very own Prof. Mecca Sullivan has been awarded the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize for her book, The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora, Difference. This prize is awarded annually for an outstanding scholarly study of black American literature or culture.

Here is what the committee had to say about the book:

“Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora is an ambitious and creative work, precise in its characterizations and imaginative in its engagements. Written in lively prose, it thoroughly documents the structure and significance of Black queer women’s writing and expressive life. Sullivan’s deeply researched sources buttress her challenge to, and rewriting of, some of Black literary and cultural theory’s central concepts, including intersectionality, historiography, interstitial language and modes of interpretation, and the relations among race, gender, queerness, and erotic life. The study illuminates the central importance of social media movements and popular and visual cultures of the everyday, reshaping our understanding of the complexity of Black queer feminist cultural production, cultural politics, and literary language. This is a book that widens and sharpens the edges of literary theory, poetics, and how we understand the language and literature of the African diaspora.”

Please click here to download a PDF copy of the full press release. To purchase or read more about the book, visit the UI Press website .

Congratulations, Mecca!