The Practice of Freedom: Nellie Y. McKay and the Rise of Black Literary Studies

Shanna Greene Benjamin is a biographer and scholar who studies the literature, lives, and archives of Black women. Dr. Benjamin earned her Ph.D. in English and M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her B.A. in English from Johnson C. Smith University—a historically Black college in Charlotte, North Carolina. Former Associate Dean and Professor of English at Grinnell College, Dr. Benjamin has published on African American literature and Black women’s intellectual history in African American Review, MELUS, a/b: Auto/Biography, Studies in American Fiction, and PMLA. Her book, Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay (UNC Press 2021), examines McKay’s path through the professoriate to map how Black feminist scholars impacted the development of Black literary studies as a discipline, revealing the strategies, sacrifices, and successes of contemporary Black women in the American academy.