Hollis Robbins is dean of humanities at the University of Utah. Her most recent book is Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition (2020). Her previous book, The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers (Penguin, 2017), co-edited with Henry Louis Gates Jr., was named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2017. She can be followed on Twitter at @Anecdotal.