Melba J. Boyd (ab6993)

African American Studies

5057 Woodward, Suite 11002

Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd is a distinguished professor in African American Studies at Wayne State University and an award-winning author of 13 books, nine of which are poetry. Boyd’s critically acclaimed and widely reviewed, "Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911," was the first comprehensive study on Harper. Boyd’s poetry, essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in anthologies, academic journals, cultural periodicals and newspapers in the United States and Europe. She has a Doctor of Arts in English from the University of Michigan,and B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Western Michigan University.

African American literature

African American cinema

Poetry

Documentary film

Biographer

• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1922), African American Poet and Activist
• Dudley Randall (1914-2000) African American Poet and Publisher
• Essays on the African American Cinematic Experience

• 2023 Kresge Eminent Artist, Elected to The Academy of Scholars
• "Death Dance of a Butterfly" received the 2013 Library of Michigan Notable Books Award for Poetry
• "Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the "Broadside Press" received the 2005 Honor for Nonfiction from The Black Caucus of the American Library Association
• "Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall" received the 2010 Independent Publishers Award, the 2010 Library of Michigan Notable Books Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2010 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the 2010 ForeWord Award for Poetry
• The Sojourner Meritorious Award for Community Service
• National Conference of Artist Award
• Charles H. Wright Museum's Women's Award
  

• Detroit abounds in the work of a local poet who became world famous

• "Frances E. W. Harper in the Situation of Ishmael," Cambridge Companion to American Literature of the Renaissance, Harvard University Press, 2016
• "Waiting for Smokey," Heaven Was Deroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016)
• Death Dance of a Butterfly (Ferndale, MI: Past Tents Press, 2012
• Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall (WSU Press, 2009)
• Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004
• Star by Star: The Poetry and Publishing of Naomi Long Madgett, Co-Producer, 2009, documentary film
• The Black Unicorn: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press, Documentary film, 1996
• Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper (WSU Press, 1994)

• Oxford Companion to African American Literature
• Who's Who in American Literature
• ResearchGate