In 2006, William L. Andrews, an English literature professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Mitch Kachun, a history professor at Western Michigan University, brought to light Julia C. Collins' "The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride" (1865), first published in serial form in "The Christian Recorder," newspaper of the AME Church. Publishing it in book form in 2006, they maintained that "The Curse of Caste" should be considered the first "truly imagined" novel by an African American to be published in the U.S. They argued that "Our Nig" was more autobiography than fiction.