Melanie R. Hill comes to Yale from Rutgers University, where she is assistant professor of American literature. She received a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, with graduate certificates in Africana studies and gender/women/sexuality studies. At Yale, she will work on her forthcoming book Colored Women Sittin’ on High: Womanist Sermonic Practice in Literature and Music, an interdisciplinary analysis of the presence of Black women preachers in African American literature, music, and religion. Looking at the exegetical, eschatological, and pedagogical elements of womanist sermonic practice, the book investigates how the sermon is personified through the Black woman preacher’s emphasis on musicality, expressivity, thematic relevance, and improvisatory phrasing. Hill is also a violinist who has performed at the White House and the Papal Mass of Pope Francis.
