Associate Professor
xiomara@umich.eduOffice Information:
4177 Haven Hall
hours: Mon 1:30-3:00 pm
Womens Literature; Graduate Faculty; Novel and Narrative; Twentieth Century American; American; Global and Transnational; Caribbean; Autobiography Studies; English; Nineteenth Century American; Theory; Gender and Sexuality; African American
Education/Degree:
Ph.D., Chicago 1998
Highlighted Work and Publications
A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life
Edited with Introduction by Xiomara Santamarina
Here is the first fully annotated edition of a landmark in early African American literature, the 1859 autobiography of Eliza Potter, a freeborn black woman who, as a hairdresser, was in a unique position to hear about, receive confidences from, and observe wealthy white women. Xiomara Santamarina provides an insightful introduction to this edition that includes newly discovered information about Potter, discusses the author's strong satirical voice and proud working-class status, and places the narrative in the context of 19th-century literature and history.
Belabored Professions: Narratives of African American Working Womanhood
Xiomara Santamarina
According to nineteenth-century racial uplift ideology, African American women served their race best as reformers and activists, or as "doers of the word." In "Belabored Professions," Xiomara Santamarina examines the autobiographies of four women who diverged from that ideal and defended the legitimacy of their self-supporting wage labor.Santamarina focuses on "The Narrative of Sojourner Truth," Eliza Potter's "A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life," Harriet Wilson's "Our Nig," and Elizabeth Keckley's "Behind the Scenes." She argues that beyond black reformers' calls for abolitionist... See More
