Conseula Francis is associate professor of English and director of African American Studies at the College of Charleston.  She specializes in contemporary African American literature, especially the novel, black intellectual thought, blackness in contemporary culture, and African American science fiction and comics. Specifically, she studies the function of literature in black intellectual thought, i.e. how does African American literature assist in answering questions about issues such as race, difference, and integration that have been topics of debate amongst black intellectuals, especially in the twentieth century; and the reception and perception of blackness in the popular media, i.e. how do the books we read, the movies we watch, and the art we produce shape and challenge our perceptions of black people and black identity.  Her publications include “(Re)Making a Difference: The Harlem Renaissance and the Anxiety of 1926″ in The Langston Hughes Review, Conversations with Octavia Butler (from University Press of Mississippi), and the forthcoming An Honest Man and a Good Writer: The Critical Reception of James Baldwin (from Camden House Press).  She is currently researching contemporary African American popular romance and erotica.