Associate Professor
Department of English
Language and Literature

277 Lake Huron Hall
(616) 331-2385
[email protected]

Courses
ENG 216 Foundations of Literary Study: Critical Approaches
ENG 231 Early African American Literature
ENG 232 Modern African American Literature
ENG 335 Literature of American Minorities
ENG 337 Black Contemporary Literature
ENG 440 Studies in Major Authors
ENG 495 Language and Literature (Capstone)

Research Interests

Dr. Sherry Johnson is a literary historian who researches and writes literature about the ways that Black writing between Canada and the US engages memory and history, particularly at the intersection of Black women’s lives and their writing, African American visual culture, and the digital humanities. Professor Johnson's research is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, the Mellon Foundation, the Slavery North Institute, and the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She is the Vice-President and Program Chair for MELUS, the Society for the Study of Multi-ethnic Literatures of the United States and is former chair of the Society's Women of Color Caucus. Dr. Johnson's most recent publication is Reading Black Life in Eighteenth-Century Canada and Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes, 2026. She teaches courses in African American literature, Multicultural American literature, neo-slave narratives and critical approaches to literary study.

Recent Publications

Monographs

Reading Black Life in Eighteenth-Century Canada and Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes. Publishing Without Walls, 2026. DOI: 10.21900/pww.34.

Companion to Nineteenth-Century African American Literature. McFarland Publishing, forthcoming 2027. (under contract) 

Porous Borders: Contours of Black Writing Between Canada and the USA. [In Editing/Review Process].

Book Chapters

“Resisting Black-Lack Readings of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ralph Ellison, edited by Tracy Floreani, Modern Language Association of America, 2024. 

“Self-care and Sanctuary in Black Women’s Salons.”  Trauma, Tresses and Truth, edited by Lyzette Wanzer, Chicago Review Press, 2022.  

Public Scholarship

Essays

“Self-Revision as Praxis.” “Black Women’s Biography Roundtable,” edited by Tanisha Ford and Ashley Farmer, Black Perspectives, African American Intellectual History Society, 2022.

Book Reviews

Rev. of Insignificant Things: Amulets and the Art of Survival in the Early Black Atlantic (2023) by Matthew Francis Rarey. Early American Literature. 2025. (Accepted.)

Rev. of Geographies of African American Short Fiction by Kenton Rambsy. Resources for American Literary Study. (2022) 44 (1-2): 379-85.

Education
B.A. Honors, York University
BEd., York University
Teaching Certification, Ontario College of Teachers
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ph.D, University of Wisconsin-Madison