First Book Institute
Announcing
The Tenth Annual First Book Institute
Hosted by the Center for American Literary Studies
Pennsylvania State University
June 12-18, 2022

Co-Directors
Congratulations to the eight successful applicants to this year’s institute! They are:
- Sean X. Goudie, Director of the Center for American Literary Studies and Winner of the MLA Prize for a First Book
- Priscilla Wald, R. Florence Brinkley Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Duke University and Co-Editor of American Literature
Congratulations to the eight successful applicants to this year’s institute! They are:
- Justine M. Bakker, Assistant Professor of Comparative Religious Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
Project Title: Demonic Ocean: Parareligion in the African Diaspora - David M. de León, Lecturer in English and Senior Editor, The Yale Review
Project Title: Epic Black: Poetics in Protest in the Time of Black Lives Matter - DeLisa D. Hawkes, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Project Title: Separate Yet Intertwined: Black and Native Bonds in the Ongoing New Negro Renaissance - Hannah Manshel, Assistant Professor of English, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Project Title: Without the Law: Theories of Freedom from Early America - Alden Sajor Marte-Wood, Assistant Professor of English, Rice University
Project Title: Overseas Filipina Writers: Reproductive Fictions and Fantasies in the World-Literary System - Cole Morgan, Assistant Professor of English, University of California, Irvine
Project Title: The World Before Us: Blackness, Narration, and Photography - Amrah Salomón, Assistant Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara
Project Title: Burning Fences, Mending Labyrinths: An Indigenous Border Critique - Talia Shalev, Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies
Project Title: Some Inarticulate Major Premise: Poetry, the Will of the People, and the U.S. Supreme Court
"The Institute has given me a whole new perspective on my project. I have all kinds of ideas for how I'm going to go forward from here."