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Emory University Dean, Carolyn Denard, to Talk on Toni Morrison’s “Jazz”

Carolyn Denard, associate dean for undergraduate education at Emory University, will give a talk at Washington and Lee University on Thursday, Nov. 5, at 7:30 p.m. in Huntley Hall Room 327.

The title of Denard’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is “Artifice and Meaning in Toni Morrison’s ‘Jazz’.”

Denard serves as dean for the Emory’s senior class and has responsibility for degree certification, as well as doing academic advising for students with special standing. She also serves on the Curriculum and Education Policy Committees, as well as the ad hoc committee for the review of course evaluation for faculty.

The founding organizer of the Toni Morrison Society, an official author society of the American Literature Association, Denard now serves as board chair of the society. Her research focuses on African-American myth, ethics and cultural figures of speech in Morrison’s fiction. She has contributed to critical anthologies and essay collections on Morrison’s work, and she is editor of “What Moves at the Margin: Selected Non-Fiction by Toni Morrison” and “Toni Morrison: Conversations, a Collection of Interviews.”

Previously associate dean of the college at Brown University, Denard also taught at Georgia State University where she co-chaired the Women Studies Program and served as a member of the associate faculty in African-American Studies.

She received her bachelor’s from Jackson State University, her master’s from Indiana University and her Ph.D. from Emory University.

Denard’s presentation is sponsored by W&L’s Program in African-American Studies and the University Lectures Fund.