Heidi Renee’ Freeman was born to Robin Renee’ Stewart and Jerome Louis Freeman on September 15, 1981 in Alliance, OH.  Growing up, she always had a fervor for teaching and learning.  She often expressed an interest in becoming a Pediatrician, but she played make-believe “Teacher” more than she ever played make-believe “Doctor.”  In fact, while most of her playmates were jumping rope and riding bikes, Heidi was often reading and writing make-believe stories and poems.  Her reading interests were diverse, even then—she was reading Ann Martin’s The Babysitters Club series at the same time she was reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Her interesting in reading did not wane over the years.  Although she changed majors in college more than four times, she eventually came to the realization (with the help of a devoted faculty mentor and her dear friend Connie Ruzich) that she was interested in literature and writing more than anything else.  She graduated in 2003 from Robert Morris University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Studies.  Subsequently, she went to Ohio University to pursue a Master of Arts degree in English Literature.  During her graduate work, she also served as a Graduate Teaching Associate for the English Department, teaching freshman and junior composition courses, including courses on Women and Writing and the African American Experience.

 

In 2004, during her last year of graduate school, Heidi gave birth to her son, Antonio, Jr.  After graduating, she took a year off to focus on motherhood, but she remained involved with education, teaching as an Adjunct English Instructor at Ohio Dominican University.  She also realized that her next step would be applying to Ph.D. programs.  Yearning for a more interdisciplinary approach to her scholarship, she applied to Ph.D. programs in American Studies.  She started the Ph.D. program in American Studies at Purdue University in the fall of 2006, shortly after giving birth to her second child, a daughter named Chase Renée.  She is concentrating her studies in the areas of literature, African American Studies, and Women’s Studies.  For her dissertation, she plans to examine how father-daughter relationships are constructed in the Post-Soul Aesthetic by both male and female cultural producers of literature, music, film, television, and cultural criticism like Danzy Senna, Kasi Lemmons, and Lisa Jones.  She is also interested in how black homosexuality is constructed on television, and she is currently revising an article to be resubmitted to a reputable scholarly journal titled “Where have all the faggots gone?  Examining Anti-Essentialist Constructions of Black Gay Men on Television.”

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