Dr. Pearlie Peters

Dr. Pearlie Peters, professor of English at Rider University, participated this past August in the Oxford Round Table held at St. Anthony's College of Oxford University in England.

An authority on the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, Peters presented a paper, titled, "Zora Neale Hurston and Catherine Lim: Global Perspectives on Womanhood from Eatonville, Florida to Singapore and Malaysia." The Oxford Round Table, founded in 1989, is an international forum which allows scholars and leaders from both the public and private sectors an opportunity to discuss important public policy and academic issues in a collegial, "think-tank" atmosphere.

Peters was chosen from a broad selection of approximately 200 participants out of which 35 were invited to the elite Round Table Forum on Women's Leadership. This was her first time at The Round Table, which is a 2lst century Continuing Forum. While at the various colleges on the Oxford campus, Peters collaborated with another American philosopher and researched the educational experiences of Rhodes Scholar, Dr. Alaine Leroy Locke, a philosopher and father of the Harlem Renaissance. She and her colleagues also spent an additional 10 days touring libraries and various historical sites of interest in England and France.

"I felt honored and privileged to have been invited to attend and to have engaged my scholarship with an array of new friends and distinguished academicians in the medieval ambience of engaging sites of historic Oxford," said Peters, who traveled to Malaysia and Singapore in 1999 as a Fulbright Scholar.

Since joining Rider's English faculty in 1990, Peters has taught literature courses in American, African American, gender and multicultural studies in addition to actively attending professional conferences and presenting papers. She is author of the book, titled, "Assertive Woman in Zora Neale Hurston's Fiction, Folklore and Drama" (Garland Publishing, Inc.) and has published numerous papers on the life and works of Hurston in such publications as The Oxford Companion to African-American Literature and The African-American Encyclopedia. She has also conducted extensive research on Dorothy West, a New England writer and journalist who is considered one of the most prolific short story writers the Harlem Renaissance has produced.

Over the years, Peters has also been fascinated with the contributions of minorities in American maritime history. As part of her ongoing research, she has placed special emphasis on the sea writings of African American and Cape Verdean whalers from 1800 to 1865, an area of research that remains virtually uncharted.

In 1999, Peters was granted a University of Massachusetts at Boston's James Bradford Ames Fellowship to develop a research project on Frederick Douglass and the Nantucket Connection and in 2003, a Paul Cuffe Fellowship from the Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport to conduct research on the oral literature of African American and Cape Verdean whalers. This past spring in New Bedford, MA, she presented a paper on Douglass and the Nantucket connection at the Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville Sesquicentennial Celebration in New Bedford, MA, and a paper on women characters in the fiction of Albert French, noted author and Vietnam veteran, at the American Literature Association conference in Boston, MA.

Peters' most recent accomplishment is being named recipient of the second annual Bibliography Fellowship awarded by the Modern Language Association for 2005. In this capacity, she serves as a Field Bibliography Fellow for the American and African-American Literature section of the MLA (Modern Language Association) International Bibliography. She is currently completing two book projects on Dorothy West.

"At present, my life is a joyful potpourri of progressive scholarship and active teaching at Rider," said Dr. Peters. "I enjoy my scholarship and teaching and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. They form a major link in what I call my lifelong learning experience."

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