Lena Hill, Ph.D. (BA '97)
Board of Trustees
Provost and Professor of English and Africana Studies at Washington and Lee University
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Year Graduated
1997
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Affiliation
Board of Trustees
Biography
Dr. Lena Hill began serving as Provost at Washington and Lee University in July 2021 after serving as Dean of the College since 2018.
Her scholarship and teaching focus on African American literature and visual culture, and she is known internationally as a scholar of Ralph Ellison. In addition to publishing numerous articles and essays, she has published three books. She authored "Visualizing Blackness and the Creation of the African American Literary Tradition" (Cambridge, 2014), co-edited "Invisible Hawkeyes: African Americans at the University of Iowa during the Long Civil Rights Era" (University of Iowa Press, 2016), and co-authored "Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: A Reference Guide" (Greenwood, 2008). She serves on several boards including the National Humanities Alliance Board and the Modernist Studies Editorial Board.
Prior to joining Washington and Lee, Dr. Hill was associate vice president and interim chief diversity officer at the University of Iowa, leading three major units of the university — the Center for Diversity and Enrichment, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, and the Diversity Resources Team.
Dr. Hill holds a B.A. from Howard University, Class of ’97 with additional study at Williams College and at Richmond College in Florence, Italy, and a Ph.D. in English from Yale University.