Lena Hill

Lena Michelle Hill is an American academic administrator serving as the provost of Washington and Lee University since 2021. She has worked as a professor of English and Africana studies and is an expert on Ralph Ellison.

Hill was born to Carl and Gloria Moore.^[1] She earned a B.A. in English, summa cum laude, from Howard University in 1997.^[2] During her undergraduate studies, she attended Williams College in 1995 and Richmond College in Florence in 1996.^[2] She completed a Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 2005.^[2] Her dissertation was titled, Frames of Consciousness: Visual Culture in Zora Neale Hurston, Tennessee Williams, and Ralph Ellison.^[1] Vera Kutzinski and Joseph Roach were Hill's dissertation directors.^[1] She was a postdoctoral fellow from 2004 to 2006 at Duke University.^[2]

Hill's scholarship focuses on African American literature and she is an expert on Ralph Ellison.^[3][4] In 2006, she joined the University of Iowa as an assistant professor of English and African American studies.^[2] Hill and her husband, Michael D. Hill, co-authored a reference guide on Ellison and co-edited a book about African Americans at the University of Iowa.^[5] She was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2013 and served as director of undergraduate studies from 2015 to 2016.^[2][5] She was senior associate to the president from 2016 to 2018 an interim chief diversity officer and associate vice president from July 2017 to May 25, 2018.^[2][5] She was succeeded by interim diversity officer Melissa Shivers.^[5] Hill joined Washington and Lee University on July 1, 2018, as a professor of English and Africana studies and dean of the college of arts and sciences.^[6][3] In 2020, she served on the steering committee of the Gettysburg College Consortium for Faculty Diversity.^[3] Washington and Lee University joined the consortium that year.^[3] She was promoted to provost on July 1, 2021.^[3][7] Hill succeeded interim provost Elizabeth Oliver.^[8]

• Hill, Michael D.; Hill, Lena M. (2008). Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: A Reference Guide. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-0-313-33465-8.
• Hill, Lena (2014). Visualizing Blackness and the Creation of the African American Literary Tradition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-04158-5.
• Hill, Lena M.; Hill, Michael D., eds. (2016). Invisible Hawkeyes: African Americans at the University of Iowa During the Long Civil Rights Era. University of Iowa Press. ISBN 978-1-60938-441-8.