Associate Professor Emerita
Email: aleonard@loyola.edu
Biography
Angela Michele Leonard, Ph.D. is a tenured professor emerita of History at Loyola University Maryland. Her publications include critical articles in Journal of Ecocritism, Cross Currents, Religion and Education, American Society of Environmental History News, National Journal of the Social Science Association, American Journal of Semiotics, Semiotics, and Callaloo; seminal encyclopedic entries in the Oxford Companion to Black British History, Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora, and the New Dictionary of National Biography; analytical chapters in (Re)Figuring Human Enslavement: Images of Power, Violence & Resistance (2009), Sites of Ethnicity: Europe and the Americas (2004), and World Making (1996); lengthy, detailed book reviews in Africa Today, Maryland Historical Review, North Carolina History Review, Journal of Southern History, BASA Newsletter, and American Studies International; the following books: Political Poetry as Disclosure: Rereading John Greenleaf Whittier, Ebenezer Elliott, and Hip-hop-ology (2009), Daniel J. Boorstin: A Comprehensive and Selectively Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 2000), and Antislavery Materials at Bowdoin College (Bowdoin, 1991); and a host of pathfinders, subject bibliographies and reference guides. Her research is atypical in its coverage of a mixture of genres, disciplines and cultures. Leonard concentrates on aspects of African-Atlantic Diasporic Studies, in particular monuments and sacred sites, the language of jazz and women in juke joints, the construction of race and critical race theory; 19th century U.S. and British journalism and protest verse.
Her earned degrees are from Harvard/Radcliffe Colleges (A.B., cum laude), Vanderbilt University (M.L.S.), and The George Washington University (M.Phil., Ph.D.). Angela Leonard has been a Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College (University of Oxford), and taught at a number of prestigious institutions in America: Bucknell University, Bowdoin College, Dickinson College, University of Maryland, College Park, Howard University, and the George Washington University. As a professional librarian and certified archivist, she has worked in academic, corporate, and law libraries. She has worked as a consultant for the National Colonial Farm, as a member of the editorial staff of the American Quarterly, and as a manuscript reviewer for the Maryland Historical Magazine and African History Review. Leonard has enriched her graduate studies and critical methodologies by successfully applying to very selective and intensive post-graduate programs and institutes, such as the Dartmouth College's School of Criticism and Theory; the Chesapeake Regional Scholars Seminar, sponsored by The Carter G. Woodson Institute of the University of Virginia, and the Ford Foundation; Council of Independent Colleges/Gilder Lehrman American History Seminar: Political History & the Early Republic; and the NEH Summer Institute: Transatlantic Background to the African Slave Trade on Roots.
To her credit, Angela M. Leonard is also a recipient of numerous highly competitive national and institutional grants and fellowships--e.g. the coveted Hedgebrook (Retreat) Fellowship for Women Writers, the Coolidge Scholarship of the Union Theological Seminary, a Mellon Fellowship from the Virginia Historical Society, the Shriver Center Service Learning Grant, and Smithsonian fellowships. These honors have supported not only the production of her scholarship, but also have provided rare research, travel, and service learning opportunities for her students. Leonard is a member of several professional and civic organizations, in which she continues to serve in executive committee positions and to present her scholarship at annual conferences.
Areas of Specialization
- African Dispora
- Black Female Jazz Singers
- Early 19th Century British and American Journalism
- 19th Century Propaganda and Political Poetry