Regina Hamilton-Townsend (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the English department and the African American and African Studies program at the University of Kentucky. Her research interests include 20th and 21st century African American literature and African American women’s literature.

Her current project focuses on the use of speculative literary devices by authors of African American literature throughout the twentieth century. Much more than a marginal subgenre, speculative literature is one of the central literary mechanisms within the African American literary canon. Regina’s research delves more deeply into why that is the case and how authors of African American literature have used speculative literary devices to envision futures beyond antiblackness.