{"id":29269,"date":"2023-12-07T13:42:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T18:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=29269"},"modified":"2026-01-07T12:23:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T17:23:30","slug":"biography-by-hecimovich-wins-praise-in-harvard-publication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/biography-by-hecimovich-wins-praise-in-harvard-publication\/","title":{"rendered":"Biography by Hecimovich wins praise in Harvard publication"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2013, Furman University&#8217;s Gregg Hecimovich unearthed the true identity of the author of &#8220;The Bondwoman&#8217;s Narrative,&#8221; the first known novel written by a formerly enslaved Black woman. Years of painstaking research led to the English professor&#8217;s biography, \u201cThe Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of \u2018The Bondwoman\u2019s Narrative,&#8217;\u201d published in October by Ecco. Christy DeSmith of <a href=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2023\/12\/solving-the-mystery-of-the-bondwomans-narrative\/?fbclid=IwAR0KXr7tEM12N8akFhXyK2_7KWCGCNQSq-bnpBkh3VPlmKLf9zFs531yzVI_aem_AWCGfriPupkBQ8SzyJckV-gyFFDQ8zi8l8mucv-rdr0jIqKvXPr4vv40I074M6nIrFE\">The Harvard Gazette<\/a> described the book as &#8220;the culmination of nearly two decades of scholarly detective work including archival deep dives, literary analysis, partnerships with descendants, and even forensic document analysis.&#8221; Harvard Professor and Hutchins Center Director Henry Louis Gates, who first published &#8220;The Bondwoman&#8217;s Narrative&#8221; in 2002, dubbed Hecimovich&#8217;s work as &#8220;the greatest discovery in the history of African American literature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hecimovich is a Hutchins Family Fellow at Harvard University and professor of English at Furman. He is the author of six books and edited volumes.\u00a0He received his Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hecimovich was originally skeptical about &#8220;The Bondwoman&#8217;s Narrative&#8221; as being written by an enslaved or formerly enslaved woman. He made headlines in 2013 when he identified the author as Hannah Crafts, just part of his 20-year quest to uncover her story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":28718,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,6,2422],"tags":[2405,802,2423,2130,1110],"class_list":["post-29269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-in-the-news","category-the-harvard-gazette","tag-first-african-american-female-novelist","tag-harvard-university","tag-henry-louis-gates","tag-hutchins-center-for-african-and-african-american-research","tag-slavery"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40619,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29269\/revisions\/40619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}