Summary
Justin Gifford is an associate professor of English literature at the Βι¶ΉΣ³». His teaching and research focus on American and African American literature. He specializes in popular literature, archival research, and critical biography.
His first book, a literary and cultural history of black street fiction, "Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing," was a finalist for both the Edgar Allan Poe award for literary criticism and Phi Beta Kappa's Christian Gauss Award for scholarship.
He is the author of the critically acclaimed "Street Poison," the first and definitive biography of Iceberg Slim, one of America's bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the 20th century. Author of the multimillion-copy memoir "Pimp," Iceberg Slim is the greatest of "street lit" masters, the cultural icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg, and a presiding spirit of "blaxploitation" culture.
He is also the author of "Revolution or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver" and the forthcoming "Time Considered as a Helix: The Biography of Samuel R. Delany," which was awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
Research interests
- U.S. American Literature
- Popular culture
- Biography
- Archival research
Courses taught
Graduate seminars:
- Introduction to Graduate Studies
- 20th-Century U.S. American Literature
- Cultural Studies
- Crime, Detective and Prison Literature
- Science Fiction and Afrofuturism
Advanced undergraduate seminars:
- The 20th-Century U.S. American Novel
- African American Literature
- Senior Seminar in English
- Literary Theory
Publications
- Revolution or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2020).
- Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim. (New York: Doubleday, 2015).
- Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing. (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2013).
- “Crime and Popular Culture in American History.” The Routledge History of Crime in America.
Eds. Vivien Miller and James Campbell (Commissioned Spring 2022; forthcoming Spring 2024). - “The African-American Literary Magazine, Modernism and Beyond.” The Routledge Companion
to the British and North American Literary Magazine. Ed. Tim Lanzendoerfer (New York: Routledge, 2022): 201-209. - “African American Crime and Detective Fiction.” History of American Crime Fiction. Ed. Chris
Roczkowski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018): 263-275. - “Introduction” to "Night Train to Sugar Hill" by Iceberg Slim. (New York: Contra Mundum,
2019). - “Introduction” to "Shetani’s Sister" by Iceberg Slim. (New York: Vintage, 2015).
- “‘Something like a Harlem Renaissance West’: Black Popular Fiction, Self-Publishing, and
the Origins of Street Literature. Interviews with Roland Jefferson and Odie
Hawkins.” MELUS 38.4 (2013): 216-240. - “Harvard in Hell: Holloway House Publishing Company, Players Magazine, and the
Invention of Black Mass-Market Erotica. Interviews with Wanda Coleman and Emory Holmes.” MELUS 35.4 (2010): 111-137.
Presentations
- “Writing the Biography: Collectives and Collaborations.” Presider at the Annual Conference of the Modern Language Association. Philadelphia, PA, January 2024.
- “Time Considered as a Helix: The Interviews with Samuel Delany.” Presider at the Annual Conference of the Modern Language Association. San Francisco, CA, January 2023.
Education
- Ph.D., English Language and Literature, University of Virginia, 2006
- M.A., Humanities, University of Chicago, 1999
- B.A., English, magna cum laude, University of Washington, 1998