Faculty Profile

M.A., Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin
B.A., Duke University

Dr. Sequoia Maner was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She holds teaching to be an urgent, ethical and fulfilling endeavor. Her courses center the experiences, wisdom and innovation of African American writers and performers to examine notions of justice and identity.

Through interdisciplinarity and conversation-based classes, she strives to bring the pleasure principle into learning. Beyond the fundamental objectives to develop research, reading and writing skills, her pedagogical imperative is to help sculpt thinkers who navigate the world as informed and confident citizens.

Contemporary African American Writers
The Harlem Renaissance
Introduction to Literary Studies

African American Literature
Poetry
Black Feminisms
Hip-Hop Culture

Maner, Sequoia. Little Girl Blue: Poems (Host Publications, October 2021)

Maner, Sequoia. To Pimp a Butterfly (33 1/3 series, 2022)

Austin, Tiffany, Sequoia Maner, Emily Rutter, darlene anita scott, editors. Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era. Routledge, 2020.

“Where Do You Go When You Go Quiet?”: The Ethics of Interiority in the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Beyoncé (Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, Fall 2019, Vol 17.1)

Dr. Maner's poetry and reviews can be found in The Feminist Wire, The Langston Hughes Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora, Auburn Avenue, and elsewhere. Her poem, “upon reading the autopsy of Sandra Bland” was finalist for the 2017 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize.