John Ernest is Judge Hugh M. Morris Professor and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Delaware. He is the author or editor of twelve books and over forty journal articles and book chapters. His books include Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794–1861 (2004); Chaotic Justice: Rethinking African American Literary History (2009); A Nation within a Nation: Organizing African American Communities before the Civil War (2011); The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative (2014); Douglass in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates (2014); and Race in American Literature and Culture (2022). With Joycelyn K. Moody, he serves as editor of Regenerations: African American Literature and Culture, a series devoted to undervalued works by early African American writers.
