Pilot for a modular course in-person, hybrid, or online format. Texts and other materials available in digital and streaming formats.

This essay tackles a question that has preoccupied Francophone postcolonial studies for several decades—namely, what is believed almost unanimously to be the absence of a Francophone equivalent to the slave narrative in English. My article challenges this assumption by reconciling the legacies of slavery in both the Anglophone and Francophone “…[Read more]

This essay examines a longstanding normative assumption in the historiography of slavery in the Atlantic world: that enslaved Africans and their American-born descendants were bought and sold as “commodities,” thereby “dehumanizing” them and treating them as things rather than as persons. Such claims have, indeed, helped historians concept…[Read more]

This essay examines the influence and effects of water in post-colonial African American women of the Gullah and Gee-Chee cultures from the sea islands of Georgia and south Carolina, reviewing the ecological theory of phenotypes establishing the eco-boundaries of the resulting pure-selves through the examination of one film and a novel: Julie…[Read more]

My paper concerns two radically distinct portrayals of genital injury. The first examples, drawn from legal and doctrinal narrative, describe the cultural norm of meaningful castration. The other, which provides my paper with its title, is from Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations. This set of one is an analogous injury that may mean nothing: n…[Read more]

Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies imagines a society where the body is under total control and the universal beauty of the body after dramatic reconstructive surgery at sixteen guarantees that everyone will be “equal.” To the young adult readership, such a world holds understandable appeal: the idea of avoiding the pains of coming to age in one’s own bod…[Read more]

The article addresses a topic of pressing but long-­standing concern to many in the higher education community: the disproportionately low number of African American faculty members in English, assessing the facts of the situation and how they might be addressed effectively.

Compiled to support the work of the ADE Ad Hoc Committee on the
Status of African American Faculty Members in English, this scholarship review is not comprehensive. Much of the relevant literature treats diversity and equity issues in higher education broadly, a consequence of the difficulty of obtaining reliable data on specific disciplines and…[Read more]

Undergraduate syllabus for a course combining media studies with creative production practices in digital narratives and culture. Designed for delivery online, with an emphasis on individual projects.

DTC 375 is an introduction to the historical relationships between technology, communication, and forms of writing or material inscription. The course gives students an appreciation of the technological history of media, including hands-on encounters with the components and signals that create various technological effects: from sound to graphics…[Read more]

attempt to bring the horrors of the indo-china war to the most intimate part of women, 1967, xuan loc, rvn

For an MLA panel, January 2016, this talk recalls the 2014 crisis at the University of Virginia about an alleged fraternity gang rape, discusses the policy on sexual assault that designates “responsible employees,” and proposes measures: change drinking laws; avoid segregating any space by identity; offer responsible parties. Humanities professors…[Read more]