Branch, Dr. Eleanor

Dr. Eleanor Branch has a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master’s Degree in Telecommunication Arts (Radio, Television and Film) from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Her academic specialization is in American Literature with a subspecialty in African American Literature/Multiethnic American Literature.  She is a Toni Morrison scholar with a broadening research agenda that includes identity development and intersectionality. Her teaching interests include: African American, African, Caribbean, and American Literatures; Composition; Technical Writing; Creative Writing; Film; Journalism and Communications; Cultural Studies; Visual Rhetoric; and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy.

During the course of her career, Branch also spent many years in writing center administration including work as a professional writing tutor as well at a variety of public and private institutions. She began her career as a journalist writing for small community newspapers in Chicago and Brooklyn, New York. She went on to write for the national publication, Black Enterprise Magazine, and in doing so won several awards from the University of Missouri at Lincoln as well as the National Association of Black Journalists. At the time, she specialized in business, educational, and technical writing.  From there, she went on to work for several years as an audiobook executive producer for Random House Publishing Company in New York City where her roster of authors included such notables as Danielle Steele, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, and Daniel Silva.

When not at work, Branch loves on her two dogs, a shih tzu and a terrier poo and has aspirations to write the great American romance/mystery novel.

Publications

“(Be)Rate My Professor Dot Com: Cautionary Tales from the Curious World of Student Evaluations,” (co-written with H. Kelly and S. Coleman) in Implications of Race and Racism in Student Evaluations of Teaching: The Hate U Give, Rowman & Littlefield, March 2021

“Remembering Toni Morrison,” NCTE Toni Morrison Reflections, 

National Council of Teachers of English, August 2019

“Oscar Brown Jr.,” African American National Biography

Harvard University/Oxford University Press, January 2008

“Hazel Dukes,” African American National Biography

Harvard University/Oxford University Press, January 2008

“Willi Smith,” African American National Biography

Harvard University/Oxford University Press, January 2008

“Mavis Staples,” African American National Biography

Harvard University/Oxford University Press, January 2008

“Nipsey Russell,” African American National Biography

Harvard University/Oxford University Press, January 2008

“Through the Maze of the Oedipal: Milkman’s Search for Self in Song of Solomon” in Literature and Psychology, Vol. 41. Nos. 1 & 2

DISSERTATION: “Family Truths & Individual Lives: The Psychoanalytic and the Social in Toni Morrison's Fiction,” University Microfilms International, August 1993

Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Critical Commentary, Monarch Notes, 1988

Presentations

“(E)rasing History: Hollywood’s Appropriation of the Caribbean as Region”

Mid-Atlantic Writers’ Conference, October 2003

 “Circles and Spirals: Narrative Form in Toni Morrison’s Sula.” Northeast

Modern Language Association/McGill University, April 1996

“Through the Maze of the Oedipal: Milkman’s Search for Self in Song of

Solomon.” Toni Morrison Conference/Bellarmine College, April 1995 

 “Rewriting the Text of Mother: Race, Class, and Gender in African American

Literature from Delaney to Hurston.” National Association of African American

Studies/Virginia State University, February 1995

“Mothered and Motherless: Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Building

Bridges: Race, Class, and Gender Feminisms Across the Disciplines/University

of California at Berkeley, October 1990