Christopher Brown

Department Chair and Associate Professor, English

Contact

• Tribble C205
• Phone: (336) 758-7133
• Email: 

Degrees

• Ph.D, University of Maryland, College Park
• M.A., University of Chicago
• J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
• B.A., Georgetown University

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Areas of Interest

• African American Literature
• 19th and 20th Century American Literature
• Law and Literature
• Critical Theory

Courses at Wake Forest

• FYS 100: Law and Culture
• ENG 175: Law and American Literature
• ENG 301: Toni Morrison
• ENG 302: 21^st Century African American Literature
• ENG 302: Law and Culture
• ENG 381/681: Madness in African American Literature
• ENG 387/687: 21^st Century African American Literature
• ENG 387: Black to the Future
• ENG 387/687: Slavery and the Archive
• ENG 781: Incommensurability and African American Literature
• ENG 781: 21^st Century African American Literature 

Awards

• Reynolds Research Leave, Wake Forest University, 2024-25
• Humanities Institute Summer Writing Grant, Wake Forest University, 2018
• American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow, 2013-15
• Princeton University Postdoctoral Fellow, 2013-15
• Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow, 2012-13

Selected Works

Selected Books

• Monograph: ‘See Justice Done’: The Problem of Law in the African American Literary Tradition (University Press of Mississippi, 2024).

Selected Publications

• “Review: A History of the African American Novel and African American Writing: A Literary Approach.” American Literature 92 (2): 376–379 (2020).
• “‘Our racket’s within th’ law, ain’t it?’: Miscegenation and Literary Form in the Plessy Era.”  Critical Analysis of Law 5:2 (2018).
• “Passing for Post-Racial: Colorblind Reading Practices of Zombies, Sheriffs, and Slaveholders” in Neo-Passing: Performing Identity After Jim Crow.  Eds. Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Young (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2018).
• “Slavery and the Slave Narrative.”  Blackwell Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2016, DOI: 10.1111/b.9781444334982.2016.x).
• “‘Every Tone Was a Testimony’: Black Music, Literature, and Law.”  Law, Culture and the Humanities.  (October 8, 2013, DOI: 10.1177/1743872113504189).
•  “Seditious Prose: Patriots and Traitors in the African American Literary Tradition.”  Law and Literature 24.2 (Summer 2012), pp. 174-212.