Courtney Thorsson
Statement
Courtney Thorsson teaches, studies, and writes about African American literature at the University of Oregon, where she is a Professor of English and a Faculty Fellow in the Clark Honors College. Her first book Women’s Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels argues that Toni Cade Bambara, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, Ntozake Shange, and Toni Morrison reclaim and revise Black cultural nationalism in their novels of the 1980s and 90s. Her writing has appeared in publications including Callaloo; African American Review; MELUS; Gastronomica; Contemporary Literature; Legacy; and Public Books. Her second book, The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture tells the story of how a remarkable community of Black women writers and intellectuals transformed political, literary, and academic cultures. She is the recipient of a Public Scholars Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of the research and writing of The Sisterhood, which received honorable mention for the 2024 William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association.
Research
"Vertamae Grosvenor's Revolutionary Recipes," MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of The United States, forthcoming 2025.
"'The Sisters Are In, So Check the Front Line': An Interview with Courtney Thorsson, Author of The Sisterhood" by Jordan A. Rothacker, Statement of Record, March 2025.
Interview by N'Kosi Oates, May 2024. Listen on New Books Network, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
"Making Toni Morrison," March 2024. Listen on WBEZ Chicago, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
"Celebrating 40 Years of the History of Black Writing & Black Women's Writing," a conversation with Ayesha Hardison, Angelyn Mitchell, and Danille Taylor, November 2023.
Interview by DuEwa Frazier, Nerdacity Podcast, March 2024. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Blog post, "Beyond the Famous Few: Five Women Who Shaped Black History and Literature," Columbia University Press, February 2024.
Interview by Jeff O'Neal, First Edition Podcast, Book Riot. November 2023.
The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture, (Columbia University Press, hardcover November 2023, paperback March 2025)
- Honorable Mention, William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association
- Brooklyn Public Library 2024 Book Prize Longlist for Nonfiction
- 2025 Oregon Book Award finalist
- Book Publication Award, Office of the Provost, University of Oregon
- Literary Freedom Project One Book One Bronx selection for 2025
- Reviewed in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Choice, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, The Journal of American History, and Resources for Gender and Women's Studies: A Feminist Review.
LitHub excerpt "How Michele Wallace Sought Black Women's Liberation Through Art: Courtney Thorsson on the Emergence of a Black Feminist Literary Culture in America"
"The Sisterhood, 1977 Photograph," Remarkable Receptions podcast, August 2022. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.
- Most downloaded episode of Remarkable Receptions, a Mellon-Funded Initiative of the History of Black Writing Project.
"Toni Morrison's Beloved," Remarkable Receptions podcast, June 2022. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Review of From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture by Koritha Mitchell. Legacy 38.1-2 (2021): 163-65.
Panel discussion with Mecca Jamilah Sullivan and Patricia Spears Jones, "Creation Is Everything You Do: Shange, The Sisterhood, and Black Collectivity," Barnard College, March 2021.
"'They could be killing kids forever!': The Atlanta Child Murders in African American Literature," African American Review. 53.4 (Winter 2020): 315-332.
- Winner of the 2020 Weixlmann Prize for best essay in African American Review about 20th- and 21st-century literature
"Kitchen, Nation, Diaspora: Ntozake Shange's African American Foodways." Foodscapes: Food, Space, and Place in a Global Society edited by Carlnita Greene. Peter Lang, 2018: 199-222.
"Foodways in Contemporary African American Poetry: Harryette Mullen and Evie Shockley." Contemporary Literature. 57.2 (Summer 2016): 184-215.
Co-author, "Black Women's Food Work as Critical Space." Gastronomica 15.4 (Winter 2015): 34-49.
"Gwendolyn Brooks's Black Aesthetic of the Domestic," MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 40.1 (2015): 149-76.
"James Baldwin and Black Women's Fiction." African American Review 46.4. (2013): 615-31.
Women's Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels (University of Virginia Press, 2013)
Contact:
Writing inquiries: Kathleen Anderson
Speaking inquiries: Annette Luba-Lucas
Email: thorsson@uoregon.edu
Website: courtneythorsson.com