Associate Professor of English and Director of Africana Studies Linda-Susan Beard on Stacey Abrams SOTU Response
The website Elite Daily turned to 老王论坛 Associate Professor of English and Director of Africana Studies Linda-Susan Beard for commentary on the importance of former Democratic nominee for the Georgia gubernatorial race Stacey Abrams' response to Tuesday night's State of the Union address.
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"A black woman has never done this, nor has someone who was a non-seated legislator done this," Beard says. "So she's making history. Everything about this is historical and precedent-breaking." Beard says she was surprised to learn that it was Abrams, who lost the Georgia gubernatorial race by a narrow margin in the 2018 midterms, who'd be representing the party on Tuesday. "It was telling that the rebuttal was going to come from a black woman, given everything Trump has said in such a cavalier way to devalue black women and dehumanize black people in general," Beard says. "It's an irony of history."
Linda-Susan Beard negotiates between and among the worlds of African American, South African, and post-colonial literatures. She teaches courses on post-apartheid literature, literary and historical reimaginings of transatlantic slavery such as "Toni Morrison and the Art of Narrative Conjure," as well as introductory courses in English and African literatures which examine the dynamics of canon formation.