Emily Lordi
Visiting Assistant Professor
- Degrees
- Columbia University,
Ph.D. (expected 10/09) - Columbia University,
M.A. - Vassar College,
B.A.
Bio
Emily Lordi comes to Cornell from Columbia University, where she earned her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature. Her dissertation reads the work of twentieth-century African American writers such as Richard Wright and Nikki Giovanni through their engagements with classic black women singers such as Billie Holiday and Aretha Franklin. Her next project is a genealogy of “soul” in twentieth-century music and literature. This year she will teach courses on Toni Morrison, African American Music and Literature, and the cultural discourse engendered by Barack Obama’s rise to power. She has served as assistant curator for the Gallery Project at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and is currently the Music and Culture Book Review editor for Callaloo.
Research and Teaching Interests
- African American Literature
- 20th century African American Music
- American Modernism
- Popular Culture
- Constructions of Race and Gender
- Approaches to Interdisciplinarity
Current Projects
- Re-Attunements: Black Women Singers and Twentieth-Century African American Literature (manuscript)
- “Soul” in African American Literature and Culture