Just out (February 4th, 2025) and available for your reading pleasure:

A Matter of Complexion: The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt

by Tess Chakkalakal

Macmillan (Imprint: St. Martin’s Press)

Tess Chakkalakal is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and English at Bowdoin. She is also co-editor, with Ken Warren, of Imperium in Imperio by Sutton E. Griggs and Jim Crow, Literature, and the Legacy of Sutton E. Griggs. Her first book, Novel Bondage: Slavery, Marriage, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century America earned the Robert K. Martin Prize for American literary criticism in 2012.

Related News & Links:

The New York Times featured a review of on February 3, 2025, by Kerri Greenidge (gifted article).

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In anticipation of the C19 2026 conference in Cincinnati, there will be a C19 Virtual Forum on February 21, 2025: A discussion of the life, work and activism of Ohio native Charles Chesnutt, moderated by Sarah Ruffing Robbins, Lorraine Sherley Professor of Literature at TCU, with author Tess Chakkalakal  and her fellow panelists:

• Faye Halpern, Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary
• Rafael Walker, Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York
• Bill Hardwig, Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Use this Zoom Link for February 21, 2025 (3 pm-4:30 pm EST)

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More soon about the Chesnutt Association roundtable at the ALA in May in Boston on A Matter of Complexion, featuring Tess Chakkalakal as main speaker and respondents Bill Hardwig, Stephanie Browner, and Maria Giulia Fabi.