Susan Manning Memorial Lecture 2026: Cedric Tolliver

2026's Susan Manning Memorial Lecture will be given by Professor Cedric Tolliver (University of Oklahoma), and titled 'Shadow War: The Ellisonian Complex of African American Spy Fiction'.

Professor Cedric Tolliver is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Oklahoma. He achieved his BA with concentrations in French and Literature from Sarah Lawrence College, before completing his MA and PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania.

Before joining the University of Oklahoma, he was Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of English at the University of Houston for twelve years. From 2022 to 2023, he held the MH Abrams Fellowship at the National Humanities Center.

Despite working in literary and cultural studies, Professor Tolliver is drawn to questions of power and history. He tends to approach literary and cultural objects from what they might tell us about the operations of power in history.

Professor Susan Manning was Grierson Professor of English Literature and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh until her unexpected death in 2013.

This annual lecture commemorates Susan as an internationally renowned academic with wide interests, particularly in Transatlanticism, and as an inspiring influence for an international coterie of scholars in the humanities.

Occasionally, the Lecture has been held as part of a wider event, such as Edinburgh Spy Week in 2019 and Muriel Spark 100 in 2018.

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