The Historians
Dr. Sandra M. Mayo, retired professor (emerita) from Texas State University in San Marcos, served as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Theatre and Dance (2013-2017) and Director of the Center for Multicultural and Gender Studies (MCGS) (2001-2013). Her career includes administration and teaching at several colleges and universities around the country, including Director of Theatre and Fine Arts at St. Philip’s College (SPC) (1993-1996) and Dean of Arts and Sciences (1996-2001). While serving SPC, she was inducted into the San Antonio Women’s Celebration and Hall of Fame in the area of Creative Arts (1997). At Texas State, she taught a variety of classes including diversity studies (graduate and undergraduate), graduate theatre history (classical, modern, contemporary, theory, and research), as well as undergraduate dramatic theory and analysis and ethnic theatre. Mayo’s recent theatre publications include Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas (2016) (coauthored with Dr. Elvin Holt) and Acting Up and Getting Down: Plays by African American Texans (2014) (coedited with Dr. Elvin Holt). While serving as the Director of Texas State’s Center for Multicultural and Gender Studies, she spearheaded and co-edited a multicultural reader, Integrating Multiculturalism into the Curriculum: from the Liberal Arts to the Sciences (2013). In addition, she founded and led several initiatives still in place in the center including the Multicultural Curriculum Transformation and Research Institute for faculty (2003-2013). Dr. Mayo has to her credit numerous conference presentations and invited talks, workshop leadership, article and book chapter publications, professional board memberships, and theatre directing. Her directing credits include her play, Frederick Douglass: Reflections on a Struggle for Freedom and Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, both produced at Texas State in 2005 and 2004 respectively.
Dr. Sandra Mayo’s Books
Dr. Elvin Holt, retired professor of English, Texas State University, San Marcos, has taught on both the high school and university levels for more than 30 years, with specializations in American, African American and African literatures, composition, folklore and cultural studies. Professor Holt holds degrees from Prairie View A&M College, Texas State University and the University of Kentucky. He has published essays and reviews in Texas Books in Review; CLA Journal; ANQ Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews; Southwestern American Literature; Xavier Review; Heath Anthology of American Literature, and elsewhere. Professor Holt taught courses in the Honors Program and directed M.A. theses in the English Department, where he taught graduate seminars focusing on Toni Morrison, August Wilson, African American Autobiography, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright.
Dr. Holt’s Select List of Articles and Reviews
* “James McBride.” Twentieth Century and Contemporary American Literature. Santa Barbara, CA, USA: ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press, 2019.
* “Jessie Redmon Fauset.” Twentieth Century and Contemporary American Literature, 2018.
* “An Analysis of Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset.” Twentieth Century and Contemporary American Literature,
* Review of Contrary People, by C. Osborn. Southwestern American Literature, 2012.
* Review of The Chicken Hanger, by B. Rehder. Texas Books in Review. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2012.
* “J. Mason Brewer.” African American National Biography, 2008.
* “Zilpha Elaw.” Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature Band about Women of Color, 2, 299–301, 2006.
* “The Men of Brewster Place.” Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature Band about Women of Color, 2, 619–621, 2006.
* “Julia A. J. Foote.” Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature Band about Women of Color, 2, 341–342, 2006.
* “Dog Ghosts.” Encyclopedia of African American Folklore, 1, 334–336, 2006.
* “Preacher Tales.” Encyclopedia of African American Folklore, 2, 1016–1018, 2006.
* “Word on the Brazos.” Encyclopedia of African American Folklore, 3, 1389–1391, 2006.
* “Dancing on Main Street: Poems by Lorenzo Thomas.” Texas Books in Review. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2005.
* “Reconstructing Black Manhood: Message and Meaning In Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus.” CLA Journal, 47(4), 409–426, 2004.
* Black Cowboys of Texas. Texas Books in Review. College Station: Texas A & M: University Press. 2001.
* Review of Proud and Angry Dust, A Novel, by K. Mitchell. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. 2001.
* Review of The Black Bard of North Carolina: George Moses Horton and His Poetry, by J. R. Sherman. ANQ Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews(formerly American Notes and Queries). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.