Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Elizabeth Brown-Guillory is Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Associate Provost/Associate
Vice President for Academic Affairs at Texas Southern University. She is a theatre
scholar, playwright, and performing artist. Before joining the faculty of Texas Southern
University, she was Professor of English at the University of Houston where she was
employed for twenty-one years and where she won the University’s Cooper Teaching Excellence
Award, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Teaching Excellence Award,
and (two-time winner of) the English Honor Society's Sigma Tau Delta Distinguished
Professor Award. The UH Alumni Organization selected her in 2007 as one of four “Phenomenal Professors"at the University of Houston. Dr. Brown-Guillory’s areas of expertise include dramatic
literature, playwriting, African/Diaspora literatures, theatre history, women writers,
and American ethnic literatures.
Her books include Their Place on the Stage: Black Women Playwrights in America; Wines in the Wilderness: Plays by African-American Women from the Harlem Renaissance
to the Present; Women of Color: Mother Daughter Relationships in Twentieth Century
Literature; and Middle Passages and the Healing Place of History: Migration and Identity in Black
Women's Literature. She frequently publishes scholarly articles, book chapters, reviews, and interviews
in major refereed journals and in critical anthologies.
She has had twelve plays produced across the country, including Washington D.C., New
York City, Los Angeles, Denver, New Orleans, Houston, Cleveland, and Chicago. Her
plays include Bayou Relics, Snapshots of Broken Dolls, Mam Phyllis, La Bakair, When the Ancestors Call, and The Break of Day. Ten of her plays have been published in Black Drama: 1850 to Present, an on-line collection of 1,200 plays by Blacks. Her plays have won for her a series
of honors and awards, including residencies in Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York.
Her work was showcased recently in Houston at the Ensemble Theater's "Heart of the
Theater" series. The Break of Day and When the Ancestors Call will appear in a forthcoming anthology published by University of Texas Press.
She has delivered 200 lectures/performances over the course of her career. She lectures
primarily on race, class, and gender issues in Black women's dramatic literature.
Trained as a Chautauqua scholar/artist, she performs the lives of renowned Black historical
figures, such as Madam C. J. Walker, Josephine Baker, and Sissieretta Jones. Additionally,
she performs monologues from her plays. Several years ago, she was featured in a television
commercial as part of the University of Houston's Image Building Campaign. Click on
link below to view her promotion of theatre as a discipline.
She has served in a number of academic leadership roles, including president of the
South Central Modern Language Association (SCMLA) and as member of the executive committee
of the Modern Language Association (MLA). She has served as president of the University
of Houston chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, a leading national honor society. Additionally,
she regularly serves as consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
She served as founder and faculty advisor/mentor to The Houston Suitcase Theater (THST),
a faculty, staff and student troupe committed to enhancing diversity in the arts at
UH. For seventeen years, she wrote, directed, and produced plays for the campus and
the Houston metropolitan area as well as arranged for nationally and internationally
recognized playwrights and scholars to visit UH. She also was founder/director of
Erzulie, an African Dance Troupe at UH. She won the UH Council of Ethnic Organization's
Outstanding Service Award for her dedication to students.
On September 1, 2009, Dr. Brown-Guillory joined Texas Southern University, marking
a new chapter in her career. She brings to the University a passion for teaching,
creative writing, and research, and a strong interest in working with faculty development,
student recruitment and retention, and community engagement.
Education
Ph.D., Florida State University
Study Abroad in France, China, England, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Poland, the Czech
Republic, Mexico, the Bahamas, Scotland, Wales, Barbados, Ghana, West Africa
Teaching
Recent Undergraduate and Graduate Courses
Creation and Performance of Dramatic Literature (playwriting)
African American Literature Survey
Women Playwrights from Africa and the African Diaspora
Black Women's Novels and Film Adaptations
Affiliations
Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE)
Links
