Photo by Sher Stoneman
In addition to her daily efforts to educate, inspire, and guide St. Kate鈥檚 students, professor of literature and women鈥檚 studies, Taiyon J. Coleman, MFA, PhD, is a published researcher, poet, and essayist on themes that include literature, equity, writing pedagogy, and intersectionality. Her recent projects include the essay, "" and a Mellon Foundation grant (written with colleagues) of $497,000 to develop anti-racist curriculum in the humanities at St. Kate's over three years.
"Diversity is not the presence of brown and black bodies, it's the amount of power that's distributed to them. Plantations were full of diversity, but what about the power distribution?" said Coleman during in a 2017 Minnesota Public Radio appearance, where she has been a repeat guest speaker on Kerri Miller's Friday Roundtable segment. "Not to acknowledge that, I would argue, is an ability to not acknowledge intersectionality, or the different ways in which gender affects different people depending on their positionality of class and race, and I would argue that that's the problem we have today."
Taiyon is a Cave Canem and VONA fellow, and her writing includes ; ; ; Civility, which was awarded the ; ; ; ; ;鈥&苍产蝉辫;补苍诲&苍产蝉辫;
Taiyon鈥檚 book, co-authored with colleagues, was published in 2019; she is an University of Minnesota Libraries' ; and her book collection of critical essays, , is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press in June 2024.