Michael Hill

Michael Hill is a Professor of Africana Studies at Washington and Lee. He received his B.A. from Howard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has taught courses covering African American literature, contemporary popular culture, and black citizenship. His research analyzes post-World War II African American experience with particular attention to the ways that black individuals pursue excellence within white institutions. His book The Ethics of Swagger: Prizewinning African American Novels, 1977-1993 came out in 2013. Along with his wife, Dean of the College Lena Hill, he co-edited Invisible Hawkeyes: African Americans at the University of Iowa During the Long Civil Rights Era (2016). He also contributed to American Literature in Transition, 1970-1980 (2018), After the Program Era: The Past, Present, and Future of Creative Writing in the University (2016), and The Cambridge History of the American Novel (2011). Right now, he is working on Weathervanes of Democracy: Adolescence in African American Novels, 1937-2016. Raised in Monroe, Georgia, Professor Hill lives in Lexington with his family.