Daylanne English

Daylanne English is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Macalester College, where she has taught since 2003. Her academic home is in the Department of English within Macalester's College of Liberal Arts, where she contributes to both literature and creative writing tracks that form an integrated curriculum emphasizing the relationship between literary study and creative production.

Dr. English's research spans African American literature and culture, Afrofuturism, The Harlem Renaissance, Sound Studies, Digital Humanities, Literature and legal studies, Race and visual culture, and Apocalyptic Literature. Her work consistently examines how temporal frameworks shape racial subjectivity and justice in African American cultural production. She approaches her scholarship through interdisciplinary lenses that connect literary analysis with historical, legal, and technological contexts.

Her publications reveal a sustained engagement with how African American writers have conceptualized time, temporality, and historical consciousness. Early work focused on eugenics in modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, while more recent scholarship explores Afrofuturism, sound studies, and the afterlife in African American literature and music. Her book Each Hour Redeem: Time and Justice in African American Literature (2013) represents a significant contribution to understanding temporal frameworks in Black literary tradition.

• Mellon Renewed Purpose Course Development Grant (2018)
• Wallace Travel Grant, Macalester College (2015)
• Mellon Digital Humanities Grant (2013)
• Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2004
• MLA's Foerster Prize (2000)

Before joining Macalester, Dr. English taught at Bowie State University, one of the nation's oldest historically Black colleges. She has also held visiting appointments at Brown University and Brandeis University. Her current work includes a born-digital project on Afrofuturism and a print monograph titled Soul Sounds: The Afterlife in African American Literature and Music. Her educational background includes a BA from Oberlin College and MA and PhD from the University of Virginia.