Four Black Scholars Who Are Taking on New Faculty Assignments

Anita Plummer is the new associate director for research and faculty engagement for the Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She is an assistant professor of African studies at Howard University. Her research and teaching focus on African political economy, emerging markets, transnationalism and Sino-African relations. Before joining the faculty at Howard University, she taught international studies at Spelman College in Atlanta.

Dr. Plummer is a graduate of Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, where she majored in English. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in African studies from Howard University.

Fiemu Nwariaku was named chair of the department of surgery at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah, effective July 1. Dr.  Nwariaku has been serving as the Malcom O. Perry Professor of Surgery and executive vice chair in the department of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He is a past president of the Association of Academic Surgery.

Dr. Nwariaku earned his medical degree at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.

Maxine Montgomery has been appointed the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University. She has been a professor in the English department at Florida State since 1988. She is the author of eight books including her most recent work The Postapocalyptic Black Female Imagination (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).

Dr. Montgomery holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degrees in English from Florida State University. She earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois.

Michael Hill, professor and chair of the Africana Studies program at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, has been named the inaugural director of the university’s new DeLaney Center, an interdisciplinary academic center for teaching and research on Southern race relations, culture, and politics. Professor Hill came to Washington and Lee in 2018 as a professor of Africana studies following 12 years as a professor of African American studies and English at the University of Iowa. Earlier, he taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Dr. Hill is a summa cum laude graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C. He received a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English and American literature and language from Harvard University.

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