Karla F.C. Holloway facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Karla Francesca Holloway
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Karla Holloway at home in Wake Forest, NC 2023
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| Born | September 29, 1949 |
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| Occupation | Scholar, author, professor |
Karla Francesca Holloway (born September 29, 1949) is an American scholar and author. She is a respected professor at Duke University. She teaches English and Law, and also works with programs focused on African American Studies and Women's Studies.
Early Life and Education
Karla Holloway grew up in Buffalo, New York. Her parents, Claude D. and Ouida H. Clapp, were both educators.
She earned her first degree, an A.B., from Talladega College in 1971. During her college years, she also studied at Wroxton College in England and Harvard University.
Later, she received a Master's degree (M.A.) from Michigan State University. She also earned a Ph.D. in American Literature and Linguistics from Michigan State. Her Ph.D. research was about the famous writer Zora Neale Hurston. She also has a Master of Legal Studies (M.L.S.) from Duke University School of Law.
Professional Career
Professor Holloway joined the faculty at Duke University in 1994. Before that, she taught at North Carolina State.
She has held many important roles at Duke. She was the first African American woman to lead a department at Duke. She helped the African & African-American Studies program become a full department. This meant it could hire its own professors.
Her teaching and research focus on African American culture, gender, and how law and ethics connect to these topics. Her books often explore race, gender, and literature, especially writings by African-American women.
In 1999, she became the first African American woman to serve as a dean of faculty at Duke. She was Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences until 2004. She then studied law at Duke, earning her M.L.S. degree.
Professor Holloway also helped start the John Hope Franklin Center and the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke. She is a member of the Hastings Center, which is a group of top bioethics researchers.
In 2013, she joined a national committee focused on improving care for people at the end of life. She retired from Duke University in June 2017. In May 2023, she was a resident writer at an artists' and writers' program in Missouri.
Books by Karla Holloway
Professor Holloway has written ten books. Here are some of them:
- New Dimensions of Spirituality: A BiRacial and BiCultural Reading of the Novels of Toni Morrison (1987): This book explores the first four novels by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. It looks at how culture and language are used in her stories.
- The Character of the Word: The Texts of Zora Neale Hurston (1987): This book continues her earlier research on Zora Neale Hurston. It looks closely at the language and writing style in Hurston's novels.
- Moorings & Metaphors: Figures of Culture and Gender in Black Women's Literature (1992): This study examines how cultural traditions appear in the language of black women's writing. It connects works by writers from America and West Africa.
- Codes of Conduct: Race, Ethics, and the Color of Our Character (1995): In this book, Holloway shares her thoughts on being a black person in society. She discusses the experiences of African-American women who faced public challenges.
- Passed On: African American Mourning Stories (2002): This book explores how African Americans deal with loss and mourning. It looks at the cultural ways people remember and honor those who have passed away.
- BookMarks: Reading in Black and White — A Memoir (2006): This book looks at how black authors often mention white authors in their own memoirs. Holloway suggests this shows their deep knowledge of English literature.
- Private Bodies/Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics (2011): This book examines times when private medical information becomes public. Holloway argues that certain groups, like women and African Americans, are more likely to be affected by this.
- Legal Fictions: Constituting Law, Composing Literature (2014): Professor Holloway explores how American law and literature are connected. She looks at how ideas about race in law have influenced fictional stories.
- A Death in Harlem: A Novel (2019): This is Holloway's first novel, a mystery set in the Jazz Age in Harlem. It introduces a new character, Weldon Haynie Thomas, who is Harlem's first black policeman.
- Gone Missing in Harlem: A Novel (2021): This is her second novel. It tells the story of the Mosby family who move to Harlem during the flu pandemic after World War I. It's another mystery featuring Weldon Haynie Thomas, who investigates a missing child.
Personal Life
Karla Holloway is married to Russell Holloway, who works at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. Her daughter, Ayana Holloway Arce, is also a professor at Duke. She also had an adopted son, Bem Kayin Holloway, who passed away. She dedicated part of her book Passed On to his memory.
