Leslie Wingard

Her primary research areas include African American literature, black visual culture, religion and literature, ethnic studies, and women’s and gender studies.

• First Year Seminar: Constructing Black Lives (Autobiography, Memoir, and Documentary Film)
• ENGL 120: Imagining America (Intro. to Literary and Cultural Study)
• ENGL 200: Literary Theory
• ENGL 210: Religion in Black Film and Literature
• ENGL 210: Black Women Writers
• ENGL 220: Toni Morrison and James Baldwin
• ENGL 230: Survey of African American Literature

Book

The Acts and Arts of Faith: African American Representations of Christianity (Under Contract at University of Georgia Press)

Articles

“Teaching Religion and Literature at a Secular College.” Part 2 of Forum for Special Issue of Christianity & Literature on “The Future of Christianity and Literature in Higher Education.” (Spring 2021)

“Laying Down the Rails: Sacred/Secular Groundwork in Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine and King Vidor’s Hallelujah.” South: A Scholarly Journal, No. 3, Fall 2016.

“As Seen Through Stained Glass: Religion, Politics, and Aesthetics in Alice Walker’s Meridian.” Religion & Literature, 44.1 (Spring 2012): 97-119.

Reviews

Review of Religion Around Billie Holiday by Tracy Fessenden.  American Literary History (2021).

Review Essay entitled “Gracefully Policing the Tyler Perry Phenomenon” on Interpreting Tyler Perry edited by Jamel Santa Cruze Bell and Ronald L. Jackson II, Womanist and Black Feminist Responses to Tyler Perry’s Productions edited by LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant, Tamura A. Lomax, and Carol B. Duncan, and Tyler Perry’s America by Shayne Lee. American Quarterly, 67.4 (December 2015).

Review of Black Men Worshipping: Intersecting Anxieties of Race, Gender, and Christian Embodiment by Stacy C. Boyd. Religion and the Arts, 18.3 (2014).

Review of “A God of Justice?”: The Problem of Evil in Twentieth-Century Black Literature by Qiana J. Whitted. Religion & Literature, 42.3 (Autumn 2010).

Reference Material

“James Baldwin and Gospel Music.” James Baldwin in Context edited by D. Quentin Miller, Cambridge University Press, August 2019.

“Same Coin, Two Sides:  Communion and Virtue in the Art of Edward Loper, Sr. and Edward Loper, Jr.”  Delaware Art Museum Exhibit Catalog, Spring 2019.

Wingard currently serves on both the Minority Scholars Committee and the Gender and Sexuality Committee for the American Studies Association (ASA). She was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion and the Princeton Theological Seminary from 2019-2020. She was also a Faculty Coach for the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD) from 2017-2020.

In Summer 2019, she was a participant in an NEH Seminar on Religion, Secularism, and the Novel. In Summer 2018, she was Alfred Appel, Jr. Curatorial Fellow in African American Art at the Delaware Art Museum. In addition, Wingard has been Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Visual Culture at Williams College, a Research Fellow in the Departments of English and African American Studies at Princeton University, and a Research Fellow in the Religion Department and Program in Africana Studies at Haverford College.