Christina Sharpe ______
Professor, 311 East Hall, Dept. of English, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155 [email protected] ______
ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT ______
Tufts University, Medford, MA Professor, Department of English (2017-) Associate Professor with tenure, Department of English (2005–2017) Assistant Professor, Department of English (1999–2005) Instructor, Department of English (1998–1999)
Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY Assistant Professor (1996–1998)
EDUCATION ______
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Ph.D. English Language and Literature MA. English Language and Literature
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA BA. English and African American Studies University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria (one semester)
BOOKS ______
2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, November 6).
Reviews 2017. Transition: The Magazine of Africa and Diaspora, No 122, “In the Wake,” David Chariandy https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.122.1.04?seq=1 - page_scan_tab_contents 2017. FAZ, Verena Leuken, February (in German) http://plus.faz.net/evr-editions/2017-02- 01/42251/315510.html 2016. Lambda Literary, http://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/10/12/in-the-wake-on- blackness-and-being-by-christina-sharpe/ 2016. 4columns, http://4columns.org/black-hannah/in-the-wake-on-blackness-and-being 2016. Make Literary Magazine, http://makemag.com/in-the-wake/ 2016. Lit Hub, http://lithub.com/16-books-you-should-read-this-november/
Excerpt Reprinted 2017. The New Inquiry, excerpt of Chapter 4, The Weather, January. https://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-weather/ 2016. Lit Hub, Excerpt of Chapter 3, “The Hold,” “On the Violent Language of the Refugee Crisis,” November. http://lithub.com/on-the-violent-language-of-the-refugee-crisis/
Honors 2017. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Nominee, nonfiction. Hurston/Wright Legacy Award http://www.hurstonwright.org/ohn-lewis-haki-madhubuti-and-carla-hayden-to-receive-2017- legacy-awards/ 2017. Public Books’ Public Picks, Summer. http://www.publicbooks.org/public-picks-2017/ 2017. Intellectual Publics a public conversation with award winning novelist and poet John Keene at CUNY Graduate Center, February 6. http://videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu/videos/video/4721/?live=true 2017. The Barnard Center for Research on Women held a Salon in my honor: February 2. https://vimeo.com/203012536 2016. The Guardian, Best of 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/26/best- books-of-2016-part-one?CMP=twt_books_b-gdnbooks 2016. Lit Hub One of 16 books you should read this November http://lithub.com/16-books-you- should-read-this-november/ 2016. Joshua Bennet, Poets and Writers, https://www.pw.org/writers_recommend/joshua_bennett 2016. Mask Magazine, Good Books for Bad Times, http://www.maskmagazine.com/the-escape- issue/life/good-books-for-bad-times 2016. The Walrus, best books of 2016 https://thewalrus.ca/the-best-books-of-2016/ 2016. Never Mind the Bollocks http://contemptorary.org/nevermind-the-bollocks/
2010. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, August).
Reviewed in: Elevate Difference; MC Reviews; Women’s Studies; The Southern Literary Journal; Kritikon Letterarum; Labour/ Le Travail; Callaloo. Oxford Art Journal; Feminist Review, Criticism. Excerpt Reprinted in Theories of Blackness: on Life and Death, ed. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard (Cognella, San Diego, CA 2014), “Gayl Jones’ Corregidora and Reading the Days That Were Pages of Hysteria.”
BOOK MANUSCRIPTS IN PROGRESS ______
Thinking Juxtapositionally is a set of related essays that perform the theory and practice of thinking juxtapositionally; from reading the spectacle of Kara Walker’s first large-scale public project “A Subtlety Or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant” alongside Marina Abramović’s retrospective and solo performance, “The Artist is Present”; to reading Sophie Calle’s “The First Time,” alongside Taryn Simon’s “Paperwork and the Will of Capital: An Account of Flora as Witness”; to Charles Gaines’ “Manifestos” (speeches and manifestos by Douglass, Malcom X, and others) alongside Melvin Edwards’ “Lynch Fragments” sculptures; to reading the Whitney Plantation alongside the National Museum of African American Culture in order to see what these two institutional spaces do in terms of framing, of making present, slavery and Black presence.
Taking a cue from Alice Oswald’s Memorial and Dionne Brand’s Inventory, Refusing Necrotopia is a work of literary and cultural criticism that will excavate and imagine the ordinary lives of the Black dead from archives, newspaper accounts, photographs, and films across the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
Collected Poems (1982-2010) Dionne Brand. The critical introduction will trace Brand’s early work, her political engagements, her commitment to and experiments with form and shape, her place in relation to Diaspora, her influences, and the radical push of her poetics.
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ARTICLES IN PROGRESS ______
An essay on Daughters of the Dust for Brick: Literary Journal Interview in progress for LitHub
INTERVIEWS ______
2017. “What Does It Mean to Be Black and Look at This?” A Scholar Reflects on the Dana Schutz Controversy. Siddhartha Mitter interviews Christina Sharpe. Hyperallergic, March 25, 2017 http://hyperallergic.com/368012/what-does-it-mean-to-be-black-and-look-at-this-a-scholar- reflects-on-the-dana-schutz-controversy/
2016. “What Exceeds the Hold?: An Interview with Christina Sharpe.” With Selamawit Terref. Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge. (April 12, 2016) http://www.rhizomes.net/issue29/terrefe.html
ARTICLES, BOOK CHAPTERS, & ESSAYS ______
Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals & Invited Chapters in Edited Collections
2017. The Crook of Her Arm. Commissioned essay on artist Martine Syms for SFU Audain Gallery publication.
2016. Catalog Essay. Love Is the Message. Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, the Message is Death, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY, November 12, 2016.
2015. Essay. “Three Scenes.” On Marronage: Ethical Confrontations with Anti-Blackness, ed. Tryon Woods and P. Khalil Saucier. (Fall 2015; 7850 words).
2014. Essay. “Black Studies: In the Wake.” The Black Scholar, Special Issue, The Boundaries of Black Studies edited by Alexander Weheliye. (Summer 2014; 6029 words).
2014. Essay. ‘’The Lie at the Center of Everything.” Black Studies Papers. University of Bremen, (June 2014; 11609 words). http://elib.suub.uni-bremen.de/edocs/00103785-1.pdf
2012. Review Essay. Blackness, Sexuality, and Entertainment. American Literary History. (ALH 24.4, Winter 2012, 827-841; 5997 words).
2012. “Response to Jared Sexton’s “Ante-Anti-Blackness: Afterthoughts” for Lateral (inaugural issue of on-line, peer reviewed E-journal of the Cultural Studies Association). (March 2012) http://lateral.culturalstudiesassociation.org/issue1/content/sharpe.html
2005. “Gayl Jones’ ‘Days that were Pages of Hysteria’.” Revisiting Slave Narratives / Les avatars contemporains des récits d’esclaves, ed. Judith Misrahi-Barak (Montpellier: Publications de Montpellier III, 2005, France, 2005) 159–176.
Sharpe 3 2003. “Learning to Live Without Black Familia: Cherríe Moraga’s Nationalist Articulations.” Tortilleras: Hispanic and Latina Lesbian Expression, ed. Lourdes Torres (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003) 240–257.
2000. “The Costs of Re-membering: What’s at Stake in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora,” African American Performance and Theatre History: A Critical Reader, eds. David Krasner and Harry Elam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) 306–327.
BOOK REVIEWS ACADEMIC AND POPULAR
2014. Black Life, Annotated. Review of Alice Goffman’s On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City in The New Inquiry (3722 words) http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/black-life-annotated/ Further Reading: Black Life, Annotated. The New Inquiry http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/black-life-annotatedfurther-reading/
2014. “Coming to Las Vegas.” A review of Chris Abani’s The Secret History of Las Vegas (1840 words) http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/coming-to-las-vegas/
2013. Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination. Journal of Southern History. (863 words)
ONLINE ACADEMIC
2013. “The Romance of Precarity: on Beasts of the Southern Wild” with Jayna Brown Social Text blog (February) http://socialtextjournal.org/beasts-of-the-southern-wild-the-romance-of-precarity-i/
2012. “Hearing the Tenor of the Vendler/Dove Conversation: Race, Listening, and the ‘Noise’ of Texts,” January 23. Sounding Out! Blog. http://soundstudiesblog.com/2012/01/23/hearing-the- tenor-of-the-vendlerdove-conversation-race-listening-and-the-noise-of-texts/
ONLINE NON ACADEMIC
2017. Q and A, Hyperallergic: “What Does It Mean to Be Black and Look at This?” A Scholar Reflects on the Dana Schutz Controversy,” March 24. https://hyperallergic.com/368012/what-does-it-mean- to-be-black-and-look-at-this-a-scholar-reflects-on-the-dana-schutz-controversy/
2016. “Lose Your Kin,” The New Inquiry (November 16) http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/lose-your- kin/
2007. “On Race, Kinship, and Black Women,” April 18. Dissident Voice http://dissidentvoice.org/Apr07/Sharpe18.htm
HONORS, AWARDS, & FELLOWSHIPS ______
2017-2018. Fellow, Center for the Humanities at Tufts, Tufts University 2017. FRAC Summer Award, Tufts University 2016. FRAC Research Award, Tufts University 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, named one of the best books of 2016 in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/26/best-books-of-2016-part- one?CMP=twt_books_b-gdnbooks 2015. Tufts Sabbatical (Spring Semester)
Sharpe 4 2014. Tufts Deans’ A and S Research Semester Fellowship (First Awardee; Awarded, Spring) 2013. Summer Scholars, James Baldwin, Blackness, Queerness, Tufts University 2010. Summer Scholars, Tufts University 2010. Race & Pedagogy Summer Workshop (Competitive grant) 2008. FRAC Summer Research Fellowship, Tufts University 2005-2009. Research Budget from Tufts University Deans Office 2008. CELT Fellow (Center for Excellence in Learning & Teaching at Tufts) 2005. Faculty Publication Subvention Grant, Tufts University 2001. Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (accepted) 2001. Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Postdoctoral Fellowship (declined) 2001. Rockefeller Resident Fellowships in the Humanities at the Institute for Research on Women (declined) 2001. Tufts Junior Faculty Research Semester (accepted) 2001. Mellon Funded Research Semester Fellowship (declined) 1997-1998. Faculty Research Grant, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
MEDIA APPEARANCES ______
2016. I appeared on #LeapNight, Naomi Klein’s facebook live program. This episode was focused on Water. 2016. Radio: Halocline Trance.
INVITED LECTURES & CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS ______
2018. Invited. Keynote. “Faulkner and Slavery.” Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha conference, July.
2018. Invited. Speaker. "Political Ontology for the Present," Theoretical Humanities Collective, University of Minnesota, April 27-28.
2018. Invited. Lecture and workshop. University of Utah. March.
2018. Invited. Lecture. Boston College, Boston, MA, February 21.
2018. Invited. Lecture. University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, February 15.
2017. Invited. Lecture. University of Pennsylvania. November 28.
2017. Invited. Keynote, “Truth.” World Picture Conference, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, November 10- 11.
2017. Invited. Lecture. University of Kentucky, November 1-3.
2017. Invited. Conversation with Cauleen Smith, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 20.
2017. Invited. Nellie Y. McKay Lecture. University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 19.
2017. Invited. Keynote. Salve Regina University. Newport, Rhode Island, October 12.
Sharpe 5 2017. Invited. Symposium on Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection. Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ, October 6-7.
2017. Invited. Lecture. The State University of New York at Stony Brook, October 5.
2017. Invited. Keynote. Morgan State University. Program in Women’s and Gender Studies at Morgan State University Biennial Intersections conference on the intersections between Black Lives Matter and Black queer life. Title TBD, September 30.
2017. Invited. Discussant. Reframing Family Photography Conference. University of Toronto, September 21-23.
2017. Invited. Conversation with Dionne Brand. The Ohio State University, September 19-20.
2017. Invited. In the Wake of Social Emergency. The Design Studio for Social Intervention, Boston, MA, September. http://www.ds4si.org/
2017. Invited. Conversation with Dionne Brand. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, June 9.
2017. Invited. Performance. The Immobilized or: Salle des Pas Perdus. Mobile Academy Berlin. Hamburg, Germany. June 6.
2017. Invited. Symposium on Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother. Northwestern University, June 2- 3.
2017. Speaker. Invited. Colloquium for Ethnicity and Diaspora (CED). Northwestern University. May 31.
2017. Keynote, Invited. Canadian Association of Social Work Education Conference, Ryerson University. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. May 29.
2017. Invited. Workshop. One-day workshop on Wayward Girls, New York City, May 25.
2017. Invited. Two-day symposium on Rinaldo Walcott’s Black Like Who? Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 18-19.
2017. Invited. Sawyer Seminar on Affect. Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. May 11-12.
2017. Invited. Princeton University Department of African American Studies’ first Graduate Student Conference, eighteen hundred and more: mourning the needy dead in the chaos of protest. April 20.
2017. Invited. (sent a statement that was read by Claudia Rankine), Whitney Biennial, Perspectives on Race and Representation: An Evening with the Racial Imaginary Institute, April 9.
2017. Invited. Princeton University Intersections Working Group, March 30-31.
2017. Invited. Learning Associate. Bates College, Maine. March 1-3
2017. Invited. Lecture. Brown University, Pembroke Center, February 28.
2017. Invited. Genres of Speculation, Blackness and Speculation panel (with Tavia Nyong’o, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Jared Sexton), the New School, Eugene Lang College, New York, February 26.
Sharpe 6 2017. Invited. Panel, “Bodies of Water, Bodies of Knowledge,” SMFA, Boston on The Oceans After Nature. February, 23.
2017. Invited. Shaping Perception Project, Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, Smith College, February 21.
2017. Invited. In the Wake. Smith College, February 20.
2017. Invited. A Conversation on In the Wake. University of Miami, February 16-17.
2017. Intellectual Publics a public conversation with award winning novelist and poet John Keene at CUNY Graduate Center http://videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu/videos/video/4721/?live=true February 6.
2017. The Barnard Center for Research on Women held a Salon in my honor: February 2. https://vimeo.com/203012536
2016. Invited. Speaker. A Mobile World Literature and the Return of Place: New Diasporic Writing Beyond the Black Atlantic.” University of Eichstaett, Germany, December 9-11.
2016. Invited. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. UCLA, Los Angeles, California. October 14.
2016. Invited. International Center for Photography, New York, New York. Dreams are Colder than Death: A screening and conversation with Arthur Jafa. September 29. https://www.icp.org/events/dreams-are-colder-than-death-a-screening-and-conversation-with- arthur-jafa
2016. Invited, Practicing Refusal Working Group. One-day workshop, Barnard College and Columbia University, May 13.
2016. Invited. Keynote. “The Weather,” Frederick Douglass Institute Annual New Directions Conference. University of Rochester, April 15.
2016. Invited, Colloquia. Yale University, Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies colloquia. The Ship. April 5
2016. Invited. (Black Studies) Methods Symposium. Lead one of the three concurrent workshops (Queer, Postcolonial, and Black Studies). UMass Amherst. March 10-11, 2016.
2016. Invited. Speaker. University of Maryland’s Annual Lecture Series in LGBT Studies; Queer Beyond Repair. “How a Girl Becomes a Ship.” February 24, 2016.
2015. Invited. “The Ship and The Weather.” Inaugural lecture for University of British Columbia’s UBC’s Race Literacies: A Black Canadian Speakers Series. University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. November 12, 2015. http://educ.ubc.ca/race-literacies-christina-sharpe-at-ubc/
2015. Invited, Practicing Refusal Working Group. Two-day workshop, Barnard College and Columbia University, October 22-23.
2015. ASA. Chair and Comment. Soundings in African American Studies. American Studies Association, Toronto, Canada. 8:00-9:45 am, October 11.
2015. ASA. Moderator. Canadian Writers Read (Shyam Selvadurai, Thomas King, Dionne Brand). American Studies Association, Toronto, Canada. 4:00-5:45 pm, October 9.
Sharpe 7 2015. Invited. “The Ship.” Black + Queer + Human: A Conversation. A one-day Symposium at the University of Toronto, October 6.
2015. Black Portraiture(s) Conference II: Imaging the Black Body, “Blackness in the Public Sphere: A Dark Room Roundtable.” Florence, Italy, May 31.
2015. Invited, Lecture. Two-Day Seminar. Curatorial Controversies in Traumatic History and Pedagogy and Commemoration, York University Summer Institute, May 20-21.
2015. Invited. Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, “Aspiration,” April 14-15. 2015. Invited. “I Think He’s Going to Be Okay,” University of Western Ontario, Plenary Speaker. April 10. 2015. Invited. “Aspiration: In the Wake,” Pratt Institute, April 8.
2015. Invited. “Aspiration: In the Wake,” Columbia University, April 6-7.
2015. Invited. “Aspiration: In the Wake,” Cornell University, March 18-19.
2015. Invited. Keynote Speaker. “Aspiration.” Afrikan Black Coalition Conference, “Educating Minds Revisiting Society, University of California, Irvine, January 19.
2015. Roundtable, “Negotiating Flesh as a Site of Memory: Reconsidering the Semantic Field of Hortense Spillers.” MLA, (Selamawit Terref, Jared Sexton, Kimberly N. Brown, and Christina Sharpe). January 8.
2015. “Rethinking Postslavery Subjectivity," MLA. Chosen as part of the Presidential Theme on Negotiating Sites of Memory. (Margo Crawford, Evie Shockley, Christina Sharpe.), January 8.
2014. Invited, “Aspiration.” University of Toronto, December 4.
2014. Moderator. “The Pain and the Pleasure of Viewing 12 Years a Slave,” ASA, November 9.
2014. Invited, Fleming Museum, Panel on Kara Walker, October 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhHmHYBssMc
2014. Invited. Masters Seminar. Black Feminist Theories, University of Bremen, Germany. May 2-4.
2014. Keynote, Invited. The Futures of Black Studies. “In the Wake,” University of Bremen, Germany, April 24-26.
2014. Symposium, Invited. “Dred and Harriet Scott Live,” Black Folks in Dark Times: Sovereignty, Citizenship, Freedom. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. April 10.
2014. Lecture, Invited. “The Trans* Atlantic: How a Girl Becomes A Ship,” Michigan State University, Women’s History Month, March 27.
2013. “Ethical Confrontations with Antiblackness: To Whom is the Human Indebted?” Panel with Jared Sexton, Tavia Nyong’o, Khalil Saucier and Tryon Woods. American Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., November 24.
2013. Keynote, Invited. “In the Wake.” (Extra-)Ordinary Presence – Social Configurations and Cultural Repertoires, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. (November 7- 9).
Sharpe 8 2013. Moderator. Transnationalism, Diaspora, Neoliberalism. Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference. Chicago, IL, September 19-21, September 21.
2013. Panelist. “In the Wake: After Life.” “Development and Its Afterlife: The Longue Durée of Slavery.” Caribbean Studies Association, Grenada, June 3, 2013.
2013. Invited. “Three Scenes.” First Exposure Symposium. The first annual conference of the Dark Room: Race and Visual Culture Seminar. Northeastern University. April 26.
2013. Invited. “Three Scenes.” Rhode Island College, February 28.
2013. Invited. Roundtable Participant. Trauma, Affect, and Genre in African American Culture, Property and Django Unchained, Modern Language Association Annual Meeting, Boston, January 6.
2012. Respondent. “Writing Resistance to Empire: African American Transnational Alliances,” American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 15–18.
2012. Invited. York University. Keynote. “At the Center of Everything.” Toronto, Ontario, April 26– 27. Keynote and all day workshops with faculty and graduate students.
2012. Invited. The Lie at the Center of Everything: Reading Property and Beloved, Willamette University, Salem OR, March 12–16. Talk and individual workshops with students in the Honors Program.
2012. Invited. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects, University of Texas, San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, March 6.
2012. Invited. Monstrous Intimacies: At the Intersections of Race and Gender, University of Toledo, Toledo OH, February 22–23.
2012. Invited. “The Lie at the Center of Everything": Reading Valerie Martin’s Property.” Gender and Sexuality series at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, February 16.
2012. Invited. “Troubling Trauma: Black Performances” Respondent/Moderator on “Trauma and Sexuality in Contemporary African American Literature,” panel MLA, Seattle, Washington, January.
2011. Invited. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects, Brandeis University, Nov. 19.
2011. Invited. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Department of African American Studies, Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects, November 2.
2011. Invited. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. English Department, “’The Lie at the Center of Everything’: Reading Valerie Martin’s Property,” November 3.
2011. Invited. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects, Africana Studies Working Group, Texas A & M, College Station, TX, October 27.
2011. Invited. “Troubling Trauma: Black Performances” Respondent/Moderator on “Trauma and Sexuality in Contemporary African American Literature,” panel. Celebrating African American Literature: Race, Sexual Identity and African American Literature, September 30–October 1.
2011. Invited. Discussant for Mark Auslander’s “Quilting Memory, Re-wrapping Slavery: Art, Kinship and Historical Consciousness in a Georgia Community,” September 12, 4:30–6:30. Aidekman Arts Center, Tufts University. Response Titled: Meditations on Kinship: Responding to Quilting Memory, Re- wrapping Slavery: Art, Kinship and Historical Consciousness in a Georgia Community.
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2011. Invited. “At the center of it all”: Accounting for Race in Valerie Martin’s Property, UC Irvine, March 11.
2010. Invited. Barr’s Lecture, Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects, Northeastern University, Boston, MA. December 3.
2010. Invited. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects, Tufts University, Women’s Studies Faculty Colloquium Lecture. November 16.
2010. Invited. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects, Boston University, African American Studies Lecture Series. November 2.
2010. “… at the center of everything”: Accounting for Race in Valerie Martin’s Property. New England Modern Language Association (NEMLA). Montreal, April 7–11.
2010. Invited. Discussion Panel. What Barack Obama Means for American Democracy, Barack Obama and American Democracy Symposium. Tufts University, March 6.
2010. Invited. Speaker, Emerging Black Leaders Symposium: Reshaping the Black Consciousness: Who Gets to Tell the Story of the African Diaspora? “Telling the Story Write/Right.” Tufts University, March 13.
2008. Invited. Women’s Studies Committee Panel: At the Crossroads of Feminism, Race, and American Studies. “Race at the Crossroads of Belonging.” American Studies Association Conference, Albuquerque, NM, October 16–19.
2007. Invited. Roundtable Moderator. African Studies Association Board-sponsored roundtable on the 200th anniversary of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act and the question of memorialization. The panel included Joseph Inikori, Howard Dodson, and Kofi Anyidoho, October 19.
2006. Invited. “Looking to Brand, Looking to the Door: Mapping Possibility, Refashioning Blackness & Desire,” (combined presentation with Kimberly Hébert). No Language is Neutral: A Conference on Dionne Brand, (Toronto, CN).
2006. Invited. “Kara Walker’s Monstrous Intimacies,” Slavery and Contemporary Art Conference, Trier, Germany, October 25–28.
2006. Invited. Keynote. Sexuality Out of Place: Conference on Sexuality Studies. Earlham College, March 31–April 1.
2006. Invited. Artists Dialogue. February 9. Tisch Gallery. Dialogue with artist Ingrid Mwangi on her work and on the show Cross Currents.
2005. Invited. Kara Walker and Essie Mae Washington-Williams. Center for Black Diaspora at DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois (March).
2004. “What Good is Mammy? Pinky and Kara Walker.” Panel “Modernist Hollywood and Its Others” Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, B.C. October 21–24.
2004. “Kara Walker’s Monstrous Intimacies.” Paper on Kara Walker on the panel Transfronterismo: Crossing Ethnic Borders in U.S. Literatures. Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. (MELUS) Annual Conference. San Antonio, Texas, March 11–14.
2003. Chair. “Rewriting History, Mapping Landscapes.” South Asian Literary Association (SALA).
Sharpe 10 (SALA is affiliated with the Modern Language Association). San Diego, CA. December 26–27.
2003. Chair. “Caste Politics: Vocabularies of Purity.” South Asian Literary Association (SALA). San Diego, CA. December 26–27.
2003. Invited. Respondent Youthful Writing in Africa panel. African Studies Association (ASA). Boston, MA. October.
2003. Moderator. “Claiming Ethnic Identity in the Face of Racism.” Society for the Study of Multi- Ethnic Literature of the U.S. (MELUS) Annual Conference. Boca Raton, Florida. April 10–13.
2003. Moderator. “Literary Forms and Passing,” Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. (MELUS) Annual Conference. Boca Raton, Florida. April 10–13.
2003. “Gayl Jones’ ‘Days that were Pages of Hysteria.’” Revisiting Slave Narratives / Les avatars contemporains des récits d’esclaves. Paul Valéry University. Montpellier, France III. April 3–5.
2002. Invited. Chair. “Not Always At Home in the World.” South Asian Literature Association (SALA). New York, December 27.
2001. Invited. Chair and Comment. “Civic Dialogues: Public Views on Private Parts.” American Studies Association (ASA) Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C. November 9.
2001. “Re-membering Decadent Blackness: Isaac Julien’s The Attendant”. Disciplining Race: Black Cultural Studies Seminar (lecture series). Tufts University, Medford, MA, March 8.
2000. Invited. Moderator filmmaker panel “Globalization and Local Culture.” The panel consisted of Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals), Flora Gomes (The Blue Eyes of Yonta) and Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women). This was part of the Small States in a Changing World Conference at Tufts University. Medford, MA. April 1.
2000. Invited. Opening Lecture for exhibition “Looking Forward, Looking Black.” Aidekman Art Gallery, Tufts University, Medford, MA. October 19.
1997. Invited. Lecture “Learning to Live Without Black Familia: Cherríe Moraga’s Exorcism of Blackness” to a class at Fordham University. New York, NY. December 2.
1997. Invited. “The Futures of Feminist Theory,” an e-mail discussion forum coordinated by Linda Nicholson and Jodi Dean, spring.
“Learning to See: Visuality in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust and Gayl Jones’s Corregidora.” Third Annual Central New York Conference on Language and Literature. SUNY College at Cortland, Cortland, NY. October 15–17, 1995.
“Inclusionary, Exclusionary Practices: Reading Selected Writings of Cherríe Moraga.” Chicana Texts in Context panel. El Frente: US Latinas Under Attack and Fighting Back. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. October 13–14, 1995.
RESEARCH & TEACHING INTERESTS ______North American Slavery Black Studies/ Black Diaspora Studies Black visual and performance arts
Sharpe 11 mid-19th – 21st-century Black Literatures and Culture Queer Studies Black Feminist Theories Black Diaspora Literary Studies
SELECTED COURSES ______
Graduate Race & the Senses Queer Diasporas Monstrous Intimacies Home is Where the Hatred Is Partially Buried: Race and Visual Culture In the Wake: Readings on Race and the Body
Undergraduate Black Feminist Theories Queer Diasporas Memory for Forgetting Black World Literature Home is Where the Hatred Is Body, Memory, Representation: Reading Black Women’s Texts (Un)Making American Identities: Blacks and Asians in the U.S. American Women Writers Literature and the Law Contemporary Multiethnic Literature Narratives of Enslavement African American Literature 1865–1920 Contemporary Black Autobiography Narratives of Fracture: Reading and Viewing Multi-Ethnic Women’s Text How to Read the World
DISSERTATIONS & MFA THESES ______
Ph.D. Dissertation Director ______Diego Millan. “Laughter’s Fury: The Double Bind of Black Laughter.” (May 2016, 2-yr post doc at Brown University; Assistant Professor Washington and Lee) Molly Hildebrand. “Gazing Out: The Visual Arts, Identity Critique, and the Empowered Reader in Early 20th Century American Women’s Writing.” (May 2015, Assistant Professor, WestPoint) Tisha Brooks. Spiritual Lives: Embodied Spiritual Practice in African American Women’s Literature and Film. Defended April 23, 2013, Ph.D. (May 2013. Assistant Professor of English SEUI.) Sophia Cantave. “De Understandin’ to Go ‘Long Wid It:” Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Black Diaspora in the Americas. (March 14, 2011; Ph.D. May 2011). Marta Rivera Monclova. Nuyorican Literature Resisting the Rhetoric of Respectability (1965–2005), English. (Ph.D. May 2010) Anupama Arora. Transnational (Un)Belongings: The Formation of Identities in South Asian American Autobiography. English, Tufts University, (co-chair with Professor Modhumita Roy) 2004. (Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Sharpe 12 Ph.D. Dissertation Committees
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Kyle Kamaiopili. Third Reader. Vivek Freitas. Third Reader. (May 2017) Kelvin Goh. Third Reader. A New Kind of Dignity: Novels of Self-Empowerment In The Neoliberal Age (April 2016). Gila Ashtor. Third Reader. Theorizing A Relational Phenomenology (April 2015). Katherine Horn. In a New Vein: Theorizing Addiction and Identity. (Director through November 2010; April 2011; Ph.D. May 2011) Abigail Manzella. Second Reader. Permanent Transients: The Temporary Spaces of Internal Migration in Four 20th-Century Texts by U.S. Women Writers. (May 2010) Chiyo Joy Crawford. Third Reader. Stories of Injustice and Resistance: Urban Ecocriticism in 20th Century American Literature. (May 2012) Kristina Wright. Third Reader. Gaining Ground: The Politics of Place and Space in U.S. Women's Literature, 1959–2001. (May 2012) Brianna Burke. Third Reader. Visionary Texts: Medicine People and Religion in Native American Fiction. (May 2011) Claudia Stumpf. Third Reader. Excess of Joy, Excess of Sorrow: Writing Trauma in Sentimental and Gothic Texts 1740–1830, English. Robin Mangino. Second reader. Imperial Pedagogy: Education and Nationalism in U.S. Literature, 1900–1925. (May 2010) Alice Kracke. Second Reader. “Representing Themselves and Others: Black Poets as Lay Lawyers in the Early Transatlantic,” English. (February 2009) Meg Toth. Second Reader. “Spectacular Materiality: The Body in American Literature and Visual Culture, 1900–1919,” English, May 2009. (Assistant Professor, Manhattan College) Sophie Bell. Second Reader. “Interracial Sympathy and the Vulnerable Child in 19th Century Sentimental Fiction,” English. (May 2008) Joseph Ramsey. Second Reader. Red Pulp: Radicalism and Repression in Mid-Twentieth Century U.S. “Genre” Fiction, English. (May 2008) Scott Palmer. Second Reader. “’The Image of Democracy’: The Politics of American Race, Vision, and Mobility, from the Early Republic to the Daguerrean Era,” English. (May 2007) Mark John Isola. Second Reader, English. Tufts University, May 2007. (Assistant Professor Wentworth College) Helena Gurfinkel. Third Reader. “Misbegotten Fathers: Masculinities, Reproduction, and National Narratives in 19th- and 20th-Century British and Anglophone Fiction.” English, Tufts University, May 2007. (Assistant Professor) Amor Kohli. Second Reader. “The Poetics of Participation: Poetry and Politics in the Black Atlantic.” English, Tufts University, 2005. (Associate Professor, DePaul University) Sidra Smith. Second Reader. “‘Her Natural Self’: Selected African American Fiction, 1892–1933.” English, Tufts University, May 2006. Tiffany Magnolia. Second Reader. “Within the Kingdom of This World: Magical Realism as Genre.” English, Tufts University (May 2005). Jeffrey Myers. Second Reader. “Converging stories: Race and Ecology in American literature, 1785– 1902 (Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Zitkala-Sa.” English, Tufts University, May 2002. (Assistant Professor, Manhattan College) Julia Lisella. Third Reader. “'Rebellion pioneered among our lives’: Four radical women poets of the 1930s and the American lyric (Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni, Genevieve Taggard, Muriel Rukeyser, Margaret Walker).” English, Tufts University, 2001. Amelia Katanski. Third Reader. “‘No-one can dispute my own impressions and bitterness’: Representations of the Indian boarding school experience in 19th- and 20th-century American Indian literature.” English, Tufts University. (May 2000) (Assistant Professor, Kalamazoo)
Sharpe 13 Dawn Mendoza. Second Reader. “An ethic of feminine reconciliation in contemporary Cuban American literature (Achy Obejas, Oscar Hijuelos, Gustavo Perez Firmat).” English, Tufts University. (May 2000)
MA Committees Art & Art History SMFA, OCAD, & Tufts Art & Art History ______Genevieve Wallen (with Andrea Fatona) Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), Toronto, Ontario, Canada Cathy McLaurin (with Tony Schwensen and Ethan Murrow) Molly Segal (with Magdalena Campos Pons and Andrea Champlin) Karmimadeebora McMillan (with Magdalena Campos Pons and Andrea Champlin) Carolyn Board (with Marc Cooper) Sarah Hill (with Tony Schwensen and Ethan Murrow) Dell Hamilton (with Magdalena Campos Pons and Tony Schwensen) Daisy Patton (with Bonnie Donohue and Ethan Murrow) Mamie Hyatt. Outside Reader. “The Downtowning of Uptown: The Formation of Studio Museum in Harlem,” April 2007.
MA Thesis Committee, History ______Nicole Cedillo, Building a Chicana Sisterhood, 1970-1982, 2013.
TUFTS UNIVERSITY SERVICE ______
2017. English Department, Job Placement Coordinator (January–) 2008-2013. Director of American Studies 2012–2013. Chair, African Americanist Search Committee, English Department 2011–2014. Dean Appointed Working Group on Race and Ethnicity 2010. 20th century British Modernist Search Committee, English Department 2008–2011. English Department, Job Placement Coordinator 2009–2011. 100 Projects for Peace Award Committee 2008-2016. University Awards Committee 2007–2010. English Department Library Liaison 2006-2009. EEOC, Equal Educational Opportunity Committee 2007-2008. 20th century Americanist Search Committee, English Department 2006-2007. African Americanist Search Committee, English Department 2007-2015. American Studies Steering Committee 2007-2011. Chair. Organization of Black Faculty 2005-2006. 19th century Americanist Search Committee, English Department 2000-2007. Tufts in Ghana Faculty Committee 2005-2007. Ghana Gold Faculty and Committee 2005–2012. English Department Graduate Committee 1999–2000, 2003–2007. Black Cultural Studies Seminar at Tufts (BCSST), Co-Convener 1999–2001. Plan of Study Committee 1998–2012. Africa in the New World (ANW) Faculty
OTHER CAMPUS WORK ______2010. Advisor. Emerging Black Leaders Symposium. 2007. Ghana Gold. Winter Study Abroad Program.
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OTHER GRANTS ______
2010. American Studies Faculty Development Grant, Race & Pedagogy Summer Institute. 2004. American Studies Faculty Development Grant. 2001. Women’s Studies Summer Institute on Women and Development and curriculum transformation. (Barbados, June 19–28, 2001) 2001. Asian American Curriculum Transformation Faculty Summer Institute.
EXTERNAL SERVICE WORK ______
2017. Expert Advisors Panel for proposed NIMHD Center of Excellence at University of Louisville. 2015-2018. Signs: Journal of Women and Culture, Board of Editors, 2015. American Studies Association, 2015, Program Committee Member. 2013–2015. Advisory Board. Black Studies Papers. An international online peer-reviewed journal for Black Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany. 2009-2013. Board of Directors, Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies, MIT. 2012—. Advisory Board. Sound Studies, Sounding Out! Blog. 2009–present. Board of Readers, Issues in Critical Investigation, Vanderbilt University.
REVIEWING ______
Manuscript Reviewer, University of Minnesota Press Manuscript Reviewer, Princeton University Press Manuscript Reviewer, Yale University Press Manuscript Reviewer, Duke University Press Manuscript Reviewer, Temple University Press Manuscript Reviewer, Women & Performance Journal Manuscript Reviewer, Lexington Press Manuscript Reviewer, UVA Press Manuscript Reviewer, Oxford University Press Manuscript Reviewer, Intensions – E-journal Manuscript Reviewer, Mosaic Manuscript Reviewer, Topia Manuscript Reviewer, philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism Manuscript Reviewer, Identities Manuscript Reviewer, MELUS, Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the U. S. Manuscript Reviewer, AAR, African American Review Manuscript Reviewer, PMLA Manuscript Reviewer, CLIO: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History
EXTERNAL PROMOTION & TENURE REVIEW ______
2017. Outside Reviewer, Tenure, Smith College 2014. Outside Reviewer, Tenure, Ethnic Studies Department, University of California, San Diego 2013. Outside Reviewer, Tenure, Department of English, General Literature and Rhetoric, University of Binghamton 2013. Outside Reviewer, Tenure, Department of English at Georgetown University 2013. Outside Reviewer, Tenure, Department of English, Willamette University
Sharpe 15 Outside Reviewer, Tenure, Bowling Green State University 2011. Outside Reviewer, Tenure, Brandeis University 2010. Outside Reviewer, Pre-Tenure Reappointment, College of Staten Island
OTHER PROFESSIONAL WORK ______MELUS-ACEE, Committee on Professional Issues, Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. (MELUS), 2003–2005. SALA Program Committee. (Elected position) Responsible for writing and sending out the Call For Papers (CFP) for the fourth annual SALA (MLA associated) conference. Also responsible for selecting papers, organizing panels, editing the special conference edition of the peer-edited journal South Asian Review, and co-writing the Guest Editor’s introduction, (2002–2005) Board of Directors and Curator. 2001–2004. Creatures for Culture, Inc. A New York City non-profit arts organization that curates exhibitions that bring together contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds and various genres and media. Perspectives: Chinese Artists in New York City.
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS ______American Studies Association (ASA) Modern Language Association (MLA)
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