Purdue News

2006 Honorary Degree

Deborah E. McDowell
Doctor of Letters

Deborah E. McDowell
Deborah McDowell has distinguished herself as an author and is internationally recognized as one of the four or five major scholars in the field of African-American literature while emerging as a leading figure in the development of black feminist critical theory in the early 1990s.

She is a named professor at the University of Virginia, holding the Alice Griffin chair in American literature. She lives in Charlottesville, Va.

Born and raised in Bessemer, Ala., Dr. McDowell came to Purdue to work on her master's and doctoral degrees after earning a bachelor's degree from Tuskeegee University in 1972. She accomplished both goals, earning a master's in American literature in 1974 and a doctorate in the major field of American/Afro-American literature in 1979.

She spent eight years as an assistant professor and associate professor in the English department of Colby College and was briefly a visiting professor in English at Duke University before accepting an associate professorship in the Department of English at the University of Virginia in 1987. She became a full professor in 1991.

Dr. McDowell has written widely for both academic and general audiences. Her publications include: "The Changing Same: Studies in Fiction by African-American Women" (1995), "Leaving Pipe Shop: Memories of Kin" (1997), as well as numerous articles, book chapters, and scholarly editions, most recently "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" (1999).

Extensively involved in editorial projects pertaining to the subject of African-American literature, she founded the African-American Women Writers Series for Beacon Press and served as its editor from 1985-93, overseeing the re-publication of 14 novels from the late-19th and early-20th centuries. She also served as a period editor, contributing editor and co-editor for various projects and has been the recipient of several grants. She was elected to the Raven Society of the University of Virginia in 1998.

Dr. McDowell has been invited frequently as a guest speaker at universities throughout the world, including Harvard, Tulane, Howard, California-Irvine, the Oriental Institute in Naples, Italy, and the University of Bonn in Germany. She is active in the Charlottesville community and currently serves on the board of Literacy Volunteers of America and is a reader for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic.