Education: Emory University

PhD English, Certificate in Women’s Studies

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Professor of English at Georgia State University, my scholarship and teaching engages studies on spirituality and gender in African Diaspora Literatures of the Americas, and I am particularly interested in early works. I co-edit the Roman & Littlefield book series, Black Diasporic Worlds: Origins and Evolutions from New World Slaving. I am the author of African Spirituality in Black Women’s Fiction (Lexington Books 2011), coeditor of Literary Expressions of African Spirituality (Lexington Books 2013). You can find my other publications in critical anthologies and in journals such as MELUS, Amerikastudien, CLAJ, PALARA, JCCH, Womanist, Black Magnolias, and South Central Review. I am among scholars interviewed and consulted in the production of Georgia Public Broadcasting’s award winning documentary on the 75th anniversary of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. I am Treasurer of the College Language Association, Executive Director of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, and I serve on the Advisory Board of The Obama Institute for Transnational Studies.

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For some fun, light reading see my March 2017 article, “How World War I sparked the artistic movement that transformed black America,” in The Conversation and catch the podcast interview on that article, “White Jake, Black Jake,”at  https://sinkholemag.com/the-tumbledown/.