MARC BLANC
EDUCATION
Ph.D. Washington University in St. Louis, August 2024
English and American Literature
M.A. Washington University in St. Louis, May 2020
English and American Literature
B.A. Ohio University, Honors Tutorial College, May 2018
English Language and Literature, minor in History, magna cum laude
PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of English, Washington University in St. Louis, 2024-present
DISSERTATION
Bleeding Heartland: Race, Region, and Radicalism in Midwest Print Cultures, 1877–1939.
Committee: William J. Maxwell (chair), Gary Edward Holcomb, Martha Patterson, Abram Van Engen, Rafia Zafar
My dissertation argues that Midwestern socialist, anarchist, and populist publishers offered opportunities for Black and white radicals to exchange writing across the color line during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Combining literary criticism with archival research, I analyze novels, short stories, and speeches by Peter H. Clark, Lucy Parsons, Sutton E. Griggs, Langston Hughes, and Margaret Walker. By accounting for the invisible labor of editors and publishers in my readings of these texts, I show how radical literary movements attempted to assemble multiethnic publics in a period typically defined by racial nationalism.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Revolt in the Village: American Worker Fiction and the Suppressed Culture War of the
Twentieth Century, with Devin Thomas O’Shea. Under consideration with Verso.
Radical Art in the Heartland: Essays, edited with Ryan Prewitt and Simone Sparks. Under
consideration with Belt Publishing.
Peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters
“Abolition’s Afterlives: Peter H. Clark, the Cincinnati Emancipator, and Black
Oratory in the Early Socialist Press.” Under review with J19: The Journal of Nineteenth Century Americanists.
“McKay’s ‘Angry Sonnets.’” Claude McKay in Context, edited by Gary Edward Holcomb,
Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2026.
“The Transatlantic Radicalism of Eric Walrond, Claude McKay, Dorothy West, and W.E.B.
Du Bois.” The Cambridge Companion to Fiction of the Harlem Renaissance., edited by Martha Patterson, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2026.
“Gateways and Borderlands: Teaching Writing in a Divided St. Louis,” with Ryan
Prewitt. Reading, Writing, and Teaching the Rust Belt, edited by Katharine G. Trostel and Valentino Zullo, Rutgers University Press, forthcoming 2026.
“Pioneers and Populists: Sutton E. Griggs, Oscar Micheaux, and Independent Black
Publishing at the Turn of the Century.” College Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, special issue
“American Literary Institutions around 1900,” edited by Sheila Liming, Alexander
Starre, and Florian Sedlmeier, fall 2024, pp. 587-615.
“‘The Pleasure of Recognition’: The Politics of Public and Private Print in The Decoration of
Houses and The House of Mirth.” Edith Wharton Review, revise and resubmit.
Public-facing scholarship
“Anvil, the Forgotten Magazine of Heartland Marxism.” Jacobin, 23 Feb. 2025,
https://jacobin.com/2025/02/anvil-magazine-midwest-communism-conroy.
“Profit Margins: Oscar Micheaux’s Amazon Editions and the Digital Erasure of Black
Publishing History.” Chicago Review, 5 Feb. 2025, https://www.chicagoreview.org/profit-margins-oscar-micheauxs-amazon-editions-and-the-digital-erasure-of-black-publishing-history/.
“Art and Radicalism in St. Louis,” with Ryan Prewitt and Simone Sparks.
Belt, 18 November 2024, https://beltmag.com/art-and-radicalism-in-st-louis/.
“No Place to Make a Vote of Thanks: On the Long Tradition of Black Third-Party Activism.”
History News Network, 23 April 2024. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/no-place-to-make-a-vote-of-thanks.
“1877: Forgotten Crossroads in St. Louis History.” Article for 1877: A Play by Colin
McLaughlin, Bread and Roses Theater Group, St. Louis, MO, Nov. 16-19, 2023.
“Peter H. Clark: 1909 Annie Malone Dr., St. Louis, MO.” The New Territory, “Literary
Landscapes” feature, 4 Oct. 2023. https://newterritorymag.com/literary-landscapes/peter-h-clark-st-louis-missouri/.
“James Eads, St. Louis’ Wealthy King of Hoboes.” Belt, 8 Feb. 2023.
https://beltmag.com/st-louis-wealthy-king-of-the-hobos/.
Book reviews and other articles
Book review: Workers of All Colors Unite: Race and the Origins of American Socialism by
Lorenzo Costaguta. H-Socialisms, H-Net, March 2024. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=58851.
Book review: To Make Negro Literature: Writing, Literary Pratice, and African American
Authorship by Elizabeth McHenry. Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association (JMMLA), vol. 56, no. 2, fall 2023, pp. 145-149.
“Year in Conferences, 2021: Report on the MLA Convention,” with Seth Spencer, Tiffanie
Kelley, Hyunjoo Yu, and Carol Degrasse. ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, vol. 68, no. 1, 2022, pp. 99-175.
DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS
Graduate Research Intern, Center for Black Digital Research, Penn State University, 2021-2022. Supervisors: P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey. Projects:
Douglass Day 2022. Co-organizer and website developer. Douglassday.org.
11th-12th grade curriculum designer, Colored Conventions Project. coloredconventions.org/curriculum/.
Co-leader (with Courtney Murray), “Petitions of the Colored Conventions Movement” digital archives project.
AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND GRANTS
Redefining Doctoral Education Mini Grant, Center for the Humanities, Washington
University, 2024-2025
Hertlein-Whitehead Visiting Scholar Award, Pittsburg State University, 2024
Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellowship in American Culture Studies, Washington University,
2023-2024
The Writing Center Graduate Dissertation Fellowship, Washington University, 2023-2024
Newberry Library/Midwest Modern Language Association Research Fellowship, 2023
Center for the Humanities Co-Sponsorship Grant, for “St. Louis Symposium on Radicalism
in U.S. Arts,” Washington University, 2023
Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity Small Grant, Washington University, 2023
American Culture Studies Program Grant, for “Symposium on Radicalism in U.S. Arts,”
Washington University, 2023
Department of English Grant for “Symposium on Radicalism in U.S. Arts,” Washington
University, 2023
SLU Compass Lab Grant for “Symposium on Radicalism,”, Saint Louis University, 2023
NEH Seminar Grant, Rust Belt Humanities Lab (participant), Ursuline College, 2023
Mellon Summer Seminar Fellowship, Washington University, 2022-2023
Bibliographic Society of America/C19 seminar fellowship, Black Print, Black Activism, Black
Study (participant), American Antiquarian Society, summer 2022
Center for the Humanities Reading and Writing Group Grant, Washington University,
2021-2024
Cornelison English Prize for Best Graduate Student Essay, 2021
Rare Book School Access 2021 Scholarship, University of Virginia, summer 2021
Humanities Digital Workshop Summer Research Fellowship, Washington University, 2020
PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSHOPS
Organized conferences and panels
Public humanities symposium: “Politicizing Aesthetics/Aestheticizing Politics: The St. Louis
Symposium on Radicalism in U.S. Arts.” St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis, MO, August 23-24, 2024.
Panel: “Radical Print Cultures in the Midwest.” Society for the Study of Midwestern
Literature Symposium, East Lansing, MI, June 1-3, 2023.
Papers presented
“Teaching the Rust Belt: How Emplaced Humanities Practices Can Re-Envision the Rust
Belt,” with Ryan Prewitt. Modern Language Association, New Orleans, LA, Jan. 9-12, 2025.
“Intersecting Black and Anarchist Editing in Lucy Parsons’s The Life of Albert Parsons.”
“Unfolding Editorship” seminar, C19, Pasadena, CA, March 14-16, 2024.
“Peter H. Clark, the Cincinnati Emancipator, and Oral Translation in the Early Socialist
Press.” Modern Language Association, “African American Political Oratory” panel,
Philadelphia, PA, Jan. 4-7, 2024.
“Roughneck Style: Radical, Interracial Regionalism in Anvil Magazine.” Midwest Modern
Language Association, Cincinnati, OH, Nov. 2-4, 2023.
“Pioneers and Populists: Sutton E. Griggs, Oscar Micheaux, and the Political Frontiers of the
Black Midwest.” American Literature Association, “Imagining Blackness at Home”
panel, Chicago, IL, May 26-29, 2022. Invited paper.
“The Philomaths: Intellectuals and the Sociology of Fascism in Jack London’s The Iron Heel
and Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here.” Modern Language Association, “Antifa before Fascism” panel, Washington, D.C., Jan. 6-9, 2022.
“‘Dirty Sheets and Lesser Authors: Gossip Journalism in The House of Mirth.” Edith Wharton
Society conference, New York, NY, June 17-20, 2020 [canceled due to COVID-19].
“Making Socialism ‘Respectable’: The Left Book Club and Radical Politics during the
Paperback Revolution.” Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing panel, South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference, Nov. 2-4, 2018.
Invited lectures and community talks
“Reimagining Assignment Design in the Writing Classroom.” Writing Pedagogy Workshop,
Washington University in St. Louis, October 11, 2024.
“The Visual Culture of the St. Louis General Strike of 1877.” National Humanities Center
“Being Human” Festival, COCA, St. Louis, MO, April 18, 2024.
“James Eads How, St. Louis’ Anarchist King of Hoboes.” Unseen STL History Talks, Spine
Bookstore, St. Louis, MO, Nov. 16, 2023.
“Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and the Departure from Black Marxism.” Saint Louis
University, Oct. 23, 2023.
Discussant, “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Political Imagination: Colonization, Human Rights, and Peace,
1945–1950,” by Ben Murphy. Workshop in Politics, Ethics, and Society, Washington University in St. Louis, Sep. 30, 2022.
“W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk.” The Great African-American Read-In, All Saints
Church, St. Louis, MO, Feb. 28, 2022.
TEACHING AND MENTORSHIP
Instructor of record
“Black Riders: 19th-Century African American Print Culture” (E Lit 313). English
department, Washington University, spring 2025.
“First-Year Seminar: What We Might Have Been: Utopianism in American Literature” (E Lit
151/152). English department, Washington University, fall 2023 and fall 2024.
“English Composition” (U11). University College, Washington University, fall 2022.
“College Writing: Power and Commodity Culture” (CWP 117). College Writing Program,
Washington University, spring 2022 and spring 2023.
Teaching assistantships and tutoring
Graduate Fellow, The Writing Center, Washington University, 2022-2024.
“Food and Literature” (E Lit 423). Fall 2020. Professor Rafia Zafar. Lecture: “The Tensions of
Italian American Identity in Jerre Mangione’s Mount Allegro.”
“Markets and Morality” (E Lit 161A). Spring 2020. Professors Abram Van Engen and Peter
Boumgarden. Lecture: “Cultural Capital in William Dean Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham.”
ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Job search committee for Assistant Professor of African American Literature,
Washington University English department, fall 2023.
Co-chair, Dissertation Workshop Committee, Washington University English department,
2023-2024.
Co-convener, Marxism and Literature Reading Group, Washington University, 2021-2024.
Year in Conferences Reporting Team, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American
Literature and Culture, Spring 2021.
Graduate Student Senate, English department representative, Washington University,
2019-2021.
Graduate Colloquium Committee, Washington University English department, 2018-2020.
Communications Chair, Washington University Graduate Workers Union, 2018-2020.
TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS
19th- and 20th-century American literature; African American literature; print culture and book history; archival theory; leftist and utopian social movements; Midwestern regionalism
CERTIFICATES
Graduate certificate in American Culture Studies, Washington University in St. Louis, 2024
MEMBERSHIPS AND AFFILIATIONS
Postdoctoral affiliate, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, & Equity, WashU
C19
Modern Language Association
American Literature Association
Midwest Modern Language Association
Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing
REFERENCES
Available on request