Department of English

My research explores 20th and 21st century Anglophone and Francophone literature of and concerning the African diaspora. I study how race and gender both shape and unsettle narratives of modernity, and how those narratives operate cross-nationally and cross-linguistically. Moreover, my work reflects on how an interdisciplinary literary and historical critique focused on structure offers a method for understanding modern logics of racial representation. To address the scope of these questions, I place myself in conversation with black feminist theory, black studies, and postcolonial theory, as well as Africanist, Caribbeanist, and Black Diasporic literary studies. My dissertation focuses on how representations of black women in 20th century historical fiction provide nostalgic political clarity for a white modern subject in crisis.