English Department Faculty
Allison Curseen
Cooney Family Assistant Professor
Allison Curseen
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall S441
Telephone: 617-552-0556
Email: allison.curseen@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., Oberlin College
- M.F.A., American University
- Ph.D., Duke University
Research Interests
African American and 19th-century American Literature and Culture; Performance and Performance Studies; Child Studies; Theories of Fugitivity and Unruliness.
Department
Biography
Specializes in African American and 19th-century American literature and culture. Her particular interests include performance and performance studies, child studies, and theories of fugitivity and unruliness.聽 Her current project examines nineteenth century depictions 聽of childish physical movements in the context of the Fugitive Slave Act, antitruancy laws, and antebellum anxieties about unregulated movement, blackness, and national development.聽Her first book Minor Moves: Black Girls and Unruly Performance in Antebellum Narratives (UNC Press, May 2026) explores the subversive poetics and fugitive significations at play in antebellum Black women writers' depiction of black girls' physical movements. Professor Curseen's work can also be found in journals like African American Review and Theatre Survey.
Publications
Book
Minor Moves: Black Girls and Unruly Performance in Antebellum Narratives. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Press, May 26, 2026.
Articles
Who Look at Me | Black Vernacular Poetics & the Possibility of Black Children鈥檚 Literature. African American Review. Accepted, Forthcoming.
聽鈥淪omething about Rock Glen: fugitive movement and queer black geographies in Hannah Crafts鈥檚 The Bondwoman鈥檚 Narrative.鈥� Nineteenth Century Contexts 46.1 (January 2024): 45-54.
鈥淏lack Girlish Departure and the 鈥楽emiotics of Theater鈥� in Harriet Jacobs鈥檚 Narrative; or Lulu & Ellen: Four Opening Acts.鈥澛� Special Issue. Performance and Girlhood. Theater Survey 60.1 (January 2019) 91-121.
鈥溾�楨verything is Alive鈥�: 聽Moving and Reading in Excess of American Freedom.鈥澛犅�American Literature.聽 90.1 (March 2018) 83-109.
"Never Was Born [Again]":聽 Grace, Blackness, and Stowe's Domestic Evangelicalism.鈥澛�Saving the World: Girlhood and Evangelicalism in the Nineteenth Century.聽 Eds.聽Allison聽Giffen and Robin Cadwallader.聽 New York: Routledge, (December 2017).
Web Publications
鈥淭he Ecstatic Ground of 鈥楬alf Drowned鈥� Bodies.鈥� 聽February 4, 2022.聽 Symposium on Lindsay Reckson鈥檚 .聽 Ed. Autumn Womack. 聽Syndicate (January 14 - February 11, 2022) Online.
鈥溾�楴egroes Be Changing on the Daily鈥�: A Review of Howard Craft鈥檚聽Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green."聽(Here Theater. New York, NY.聽 July-August 2015.)聽Not That But This Arts and Culture Webzine.聽Ed. Nathaniel Donnett. Web. Winter 2016.聽