Dr Tessa Roynon is a Senior Research Fellow in English at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. She is a specialist in modern North American literature, particularly African American literature, in Anglophone literature of the black diaspora, and in Classical Reception studies. She is the author of The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison (CUP 2012), and Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition (OUP 2013) and co-editor of the acclaimed interdisciplinary essay collection, African Athena: New Agendas (OUP 2011, with Daniel Orrells and Gurminder Bhambra).

The Lecture is generously funded by IATL as Public Lecture for the undergraduate module 'Africa and the Making of Classical Literature'.