Outstanding grad unearths roots of challenges to Black women authors
Jane Forman, who is earning her BA in English, summa cum laude, is named the college’s outstanding graduate for fall 2024
Jane Forman has painstakingly recounted evidence that Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones and other prominent Black women authors have faced challenges to the authenticity and quality of their work, and that these critiques emanate from racist and sexist conceptions of who is rightly considered an author and an authority.
Forman, who is earning her BA in English, summa cum laude, deeply impressed her faculty committee, and she has been named the outstanding graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences for fall 2024.
Her thesis is titled “Deconstructing Archival Debris in the Margins: How Black Women Writers Navigate Intersectional Oppression During the Authorial Identity Formation Process.”
Jane Forman, who is earning her BA in English, summa cum laude, is the College of Arts and Science outstanding graduate for fall 2024.
In this work, Forman considers cases of Black women authors who were unfairly denigrated and rebuked because their intersectional identity made them targets. Forman cites troubling episodes of Claudine Gay, former president of Harvard; Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project; Toni Morrison, winner of a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize; and others.
When she spoke recently with Daryl Maeda, interim dean of the college, Forman described her thesis as a “contemplation of how our history continuously influences contemporary figurations of American life.”
In her thesis, she concludes: “The history of slavery is all of ours to confront, disregarding our contemporary racial and gender positionality in America. The virulent debris that emerged from slavery’s formal demolition continues to infect society today … We are all implicated in how this history attempts to exert influence over our collective present and future.”
Jennifer Ho, director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts, Eaton Professor of Humanities and the Arts and professor of ethnic studies, served as Forman’s thesis advisor. In her written narrative to the faculty thesis defense form, Ho said Forman’s thesis was made especially strong by her tracing of the “archival debris” across three periods of Black female authorship:
“Using critical race theory as her main theoretical touchstone, Jane considers the intersectional oppression that plagues Black women writers—the way that they must continuously navigate charges of plagiarism, incompetence and illegitimacy. Combining close reading/explication with theoretical applications of critical race theory, Jane takes readers through the troubling trend of discounting Black women writers due to sexism and racism, linked to U.S. history of anti-Black racism and white supremacy.”
In a letter of support for Forman, Emily Harrington, an associate professor of English who served on Forman’s committee, said Forman’s work “is easily the best senior thesis I have read during my career.”
Through all her thesis chapters, Forman “draws a direct connection between the various ways in which Black women authors have been questioned both in their authenticity and in the quality of their work, from the ‘first’ African American poet to the present day,” Harrington said, adding:
“Having also taken graduate seminars as an undergraduate, Jane is the most advanced undergraduate I have encountered at CU. … She has been a leader in our department, and I cannot think of a more ‘outstanding undergraduate.’”
In the acknowledgment section of her thesis, Forman shares some personal reflection and advice:
“For anyone uncertain of what they should do or where they should go, I urge you to follow the path that leads you toward the most expansive feeling. Three years ago, I dropped out of Georgetown University, unsure of what my life would be like. I didn’t know where I wanted to be, but I knew I couldn’t stay there. Despite the tumultuous journey that led me here, I feel eternally grateful for where I ended up.”
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