Maxine Lavon Montgomery
Maxine Montgomery named Lawton Professor | English | April 19, 2023
Maxine Lavon Montgomery is Professor of English. She earned a doctorate in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her areas of academic specialization include Contemporary Black Women’s Fiction, African Diaspora Literature and Culture, Black Apocalyptic and Postapocalyptic Literature and Expressive Culture, and Critical Race Theory.
Professor Montgomery has published widely on the fiction of Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison. Currently, her research focuses on the intersection between race, gender, sexualities and vernacular culture. Her most recent book, The Postapocalyptic Black Female Imagination, examines the kinds of catastrophe we are now witnessing – pandemics, hurricanes, floods, and moments of social unrest – against the backdrop of our current moment with a view to interrogating futuristic imaginaries in representative works of fiction and visual culture by black women across the diaspora, from Octavia E. Butler to Beyonce. A spin-off book, Un-Zombifying Blackness: Race, Gender, and Vernacular Culture, is in the proposal phase. Her work in the area of contemporary black women’s fiction has been published in South Carolina Review, College Language Association Journal, Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, and African-American Review, the foremost publication in the field.
The chair of Florida State University’s 2020-21 Anti-Racism, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force, Professor Montgomery is also the recipient of four University awards for excellence in Teaching.
Faculty Profile National Public Radio Interview