Women's Writing Before Woolf: A Social Reference/Kim F. Hall

Kim F. Hall (1961-)

Kim Felicia Hall (born 1961) is a leading theorist and expert in black feminist studies, critical race theory, early modern and Renaissance literature, and the intersection of these topics. She is the Lucyle Hook Chair of English and a Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, the University of Columbia, New York.

Biography

Hall was born in 1961 in Baltimore, Maryland. She undertook her Bachelor of Arts at Hood College, a private college in Frederick, Maryland, as an undergraduate. She then undertook postgraduate study at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her PhD in 16th and 17th century English literature.

Hall taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College (a private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania), and Georgetown University in Washington DC. She then became the Thomas F.X. Mullarkey Chair of Literature at Fordham University in New York, the first chair in the humanities.

Finally, Hall came to direct the African Studies program at Barnard College, also in New York, in 2006, specialising in Africana Studies, English, and Medieval and Renaissance Studies. In 2010, she also assumed the Lucyle Hook Chair of English literature at Barnard .

Works

Hall’s first book, Things of Darkness: Economics of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, was published in 1995/1996 by Cornell University Press. In it, Hall takes a black feminist approach to the topic of race in Renaissance literature, especially in Shakespeare but also in other Renaissance and Early Modern texts. It was named an outstanding academic book by Choice magazine.

Her second book, Othello: Texts and Contexts, was published in 2006 by St. Martin’s Press. The book takes the form of an edition of Shakespeare’s play Othello with additional primary documents and illustrations to describe and contextualize the play for contemporary audiences.

Hall is currently working on two texts.

• The Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Gender and Material Culture in Seventeenth Century England will examine the interplay of gender, race and materialistic culture in the 17th century Anglo-Caribbean sugar trade.

• ‘Othello Was My Grandfather’: Shakespeare and Race in the African Diaspora will expand the work for which she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center and the Schomburg Center for Research in African-American Culture.

In 2016, Hall spoke at the Folger Library on the above topic as part of the Shakespeare Anniversary Lecture Series around the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

List of Works:

• 'Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England', 1995
• 'Othello, the Moor of Venice: texts and contexts', 2007
• 'I Rather Would Wish to be a Black-moor: Beauty, Race, and Rank in Lady Mary Wroth's "Urania"', 1994
• 'Object into Object?: Some Thoughts on the Presence of Black Women in Early Modern Culture', 2000
• 'Reading Black Characters: Staging Literacy, 1604-1855', 2010
• 'It Feels Like the Universe to Me', 2016
• 'Black Male Frames: African Americans in a Century of Hollywood Cinema, 1903-2003', 2015

Reputation and Legacy

Hall was awarded several grants and fellowships to enable her research, including a National Humanities Center Fellowship; a Fellowship at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; an National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellowship at the Newberry Library in Chicago; and an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowship.

Hall is also a past chair of the Shakespeare Division of the Modern Language Association, and a former Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. Hall is also a featured member of the African American Intellectual History Society.

In 2014, Barnard Library and Academic Information Services (BLAIS) recognized her as their Inaugural Library Partner of the Year. In 2015 she won a Tow Award for Innovative Pedagogy for The Digital Shange Project and course, which also received a President’s Committee on Online Learning grant and a Mellon-funded “Barnard Teaches: Real Place + Digital Access” grant.

In 2016, Hall was named one of the Top 25 Women Making a Difference in Higher Education and Beyond by Diverse Issues in Education. She also received the Barnard College Presidential Research Award.

References

• African American Intellectual History Society. “Featured Members”. Accessed 26 April 2021. https://www.aaihs.org/membership-account/become-a-member/featured-members/

• Barnard College. “Kim F. Hall, Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Director of Africana Studies.” Accessed 26 April 2021. https://barnard.edu/headlines/kim-f-hall-lucyle-hook-professor-english-and-director-africana-studies

• Barnard College. “Kim F. Hall”. Accessed 26 April 2021. https://barnard.edu/profiles/kim-f-hall

• Columbia | Social Difference. “Kim Hall”. Accessed 26 April 2021. https://www.socialdifference.columbia.edu/faculty-/kim-hall

• Lafayette College Presidential Symposium. “Kim F. Hall”. Accessed 26 April 2021. https://sites.lafayette.edu/symposium/kim-f-hall/

• National Endowment for the Humanities. “Funded Projects Query Form: "Othello Was My Grandfather": Shakespeare and Race in the African Diaspora”. Accessed 26 April 2021. https://securegrants.neh.gov/publicquery/main.aspx?f=1&gn=FT-248888-16

• WorldCat. “Othello, the Moor of Venice: texts and contexts”. Accessed 26 April 2021. https://www.worldcat.org/title/othello-the-moor-of-venice-texts-and-contexts/oclc/82672921

Further Reading

• Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economics of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1995.

• Hall, Kim F. Othello, the Moor of Venice: Texts and Contexts. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2006.

• Hall, Kim F. Othello was my Grandfather. Washington D.C.: Folger Institute, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u324C6ra5o&ab_channel=FolgerLibrary