Katherine Bassard, a professor of English and senior vice provost for faculty affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, is the editor of a new book on the writings of Peter Randolph, a slave who became a leading abolitionist and religious figure.
The book, Sketches of Slave Life From Slave Cabin to the Pulpit (West Virginia University Press, 2016), tells the story of an African American man who was born a slave in Virginia. He was freed in 1844 along with all the slaves on his plantation upon the death of the slave owner. Randolph and 65 other slaves were given $15 each from the slave owner’s estate and relocated to Boston.
Professor Bassard is the author of Spiritual Interrogations: Culture, Gender and Community in Early African American Women’s Writing (Princeton University Press, 1999) and Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible (University of Georgia Press, 2010).
Professor Bassard is a graduate of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She holds a master’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University.
