Sandra Shannon

Posted in Past Guests  |  Tagged N-S

Sandra Shannon is a professor of English at Howard University. One of the leading authorities on the works of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, Shannon is the author of The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson (1996), the first book-length study of his work. African American Review writes that “Shannon’s journalistic, on-the-pulse approach…adds immediacy and an element of orality, making the reader feel that he or she is in the actual presence of the playwright’s voice, privy to his inflections and personal phrasings.” In 2003 she published August Wilson’s Fences: A Reference Guide, a companion piece to Wilson’s acclaimed play, Fences. She also co-edited the collection August Wilson and Black Aesthetics (2004). Shannon’s work has been published in the African American Review, Theatre Review, Callaloo, Obsidian II, the Zora Neale Hurston Review, and MELUS. She has contributed essays to African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader (2001), Memory and Cultural Politics: New Approaches to American Ethnic Literatures (1996), May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson (1994), and others. Shannon is currently editing Approaches to Teaching August Wilson (forthcoming in 2008), and is co-editor of Theatre Topics Journal. She is also president of the Black Theatre Network. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. Shannon lives in Maryland.

Links

• “English Professor Helps Keep August Wilson’s Legacy Alive” by Jo-Ann English. Howard University website. November 2012.
• “Roscoe Orman and the Legacy of August Wilson.” WYPR. 7 February 2012.

Media

Let Freedom Ring | April 16, 2008
SYMPOSIUM I | Art and Democracy in the King Years and Beyond: Scholarly Assessments