Patricia Brown, PhD

Patricia Lynn Brown, PhD, is a professor of English at Azusa Pacific University, teaching the Art and Craft of Writing, Studies in Literature, American Literature, African American Literature, American Ethnic Literature, and the African American Experience. She previously taught English courses at the University of Illinois for 10 years, and language arts classes at Amelia Earhart Middle School in Riverside, California for three years. Brown’s research and teaching interests include African American literature, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, and religious studies and literature. Her dissertation study, Gendering the Pulpit: Religious Discourse and the African American Female Experience, traces the entry of African American women into religious discourse and their continuous appropriation of a literary tradition that grants them voice. Her publications and conference presentations explore the historical implications of the African American experience in relation to the broader study of American literature. Brown’s current scholarship consists of a detailed study of Toni Morrison’s novels and a study of African American women’s responses to oppression.