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N AMWALI S ERPELL UC Berkeley | English Department 322 Wheeler Hall | Berkeley, CA 94720-1030 Namwali.Com | Serpell@Berkeley.Edu N AMWALI S ERPELL UC Berkeley | English Department 322 Wheeler Hall | Berkeley, CA 94720-1030 namwali.com | [email protected] EMPLOYMENT University of California, Berkeley English Department, Berkeley CA. Associate Professor, 2014-now. Assistant Professor, 2008-2014. EDUCATION Harvard University, Cambridge MA. PhD. June, 2008. English and American Literature and Language. A.M. June, 2004. English and American Literature and Language. Yale University, New Haven CT. B.A. May, 2001. Distinction in English Language and Literature. Summa cum laude. GRANTS AND AWARDS 2019 Winner of the Brittle Paper Award for Best Essay (for “On Black Difficulty”). 2019 Short listed for the Reading Women Award (for The Old Drift). 2019 Long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize (for The Old Drift). 2019 Long listed for the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown (for The Old Drift). 2015-7 Writing residencies at Hedgebrook, Ledig House, and Sangam House (for The Old Drift). 2015 The Caine Prize for African Writing (won for “The Sack”). 2015 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Tuition Scholar (for fiction). 2014 Africa 39, a Hay Festival project identifying the best 39 African writers under 40. 2014-5 Townsend Center for the Humanities Fellowship (UC Berkeley). 2013 Hellman Faculty Fund Fellowship. 2012 Robert O. Collins Award (UC Berkeley Institute for International Studies). 2011-2 Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship. 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Women Writers’ Award (for fiction). 2010 The Caine Prize for African Writing (shortlisted for “Muzungu”). 2010 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend. 2009 Selected for The Best American Short Stories, ed. Alice Sebold (for “Muzungu”). 2004-7 Helen Choate Bell Prize for Best Essay in American Literature (Harvard; twice). 2006 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Society Merit Fellowship (Harvard). 2006 Winthrop Sargent Prize for Best Essay on Shakespeare (Harvard). 2005-6 Derek Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (Harvard; thrice). 2002 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies. PUBLICATIONS Books American Psycho Analysis. Rereadings Series (contracted). New York: Columbia UP, 2021. Stranger Faces. Unpublished Lectures Series (in production). Oakland: Transit Books, 2020. The Old Drift: A Novel. New York: Penguin Random House/Hogarth, 2019. Reviewed in: The New York Times Sunday Book Review (cover, Salman Rushdie), The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Observer. Seven Modes of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014. N AMWALI S ERPELL – 2 – PUBLICATIONS Scholarly essays “Notes on Reading.” Post-45: Redefining Formalism (forthcoming). “�; or, Word of the Year.” Post-45: How to Be Now 2 (April 28, 2019). “Weird Times.” Review, Caroline Levine, Forms (Princeton, 2015). PMLA 132.5 (Oct 2017). “A Heap of Cliché.” Critique and Postcritique, eds. R. Felski and E. Anker (Duke UP, 2017). “Introduction.” Devil on the Cross, by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (Penguin, 2017). Reprinted as “Kenya in Another Tongue” in The New York Review of Books Daily April 12, 2017. “Uses of Criticism.” Review of Rita Felski, Uses of Literature (Blackwell Manifestos, 2008). The Los Angeles Review of Books Feb 1, 2015. Review of Judith Ryan, The Novel After Theory (Columbia UP, 2012). Modern Language Notes: Comparative Literature 27.5 (Dec 2012). “Of Being Bridge.” The Comparatist 36 (May 2012). “Repetition and the Ethics of Suspended Reading in American Psycho.” Critique 51.1 (Fall 2009). “Mutual Exclusion, Oscillation, and Ethical Projection in The Crying of Lot 49 and The Turn of the Screw.” Narrative 16.3 (Oct 2008). “The Ethics of the Adjoining: Multiplicity in Beloved.” On the Turn: The Ethics of Fiction in Contemporary Narrative in English, ed. Bárbara Arizti. (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008). Short fiction “The Furrow.” O, The Oprah Magazine (forthcoming). “A Mercy, A Sport.” California Magazine (forthcoming). “Take It.” Freeman’s: The California Issue (Fall 2019). “Will Williams.” Disorder: Amazon Original Stories (June 27, 2019). “Zambia Airways.” Excerpt from The Old Drift. LitHub March 29, 2019. “The Living and the Dead.” New Daughters of Africa, Ed. Margaret Busby (Myriad, 2019). “What’s There.” McSweeney’s Quarterly 53 (Fall 2018). “Company.” McSweeney’s Quarterly 49 (Spring 2017). “Triptych: Texas Pool Party.” Triple Canopy January 25, 2017. “Account.” The Harvard Advocate (Winter, 2016). Reprinted in Enkare Review Nov 7, 2016. “Zo’ona.” Caine Prize Anthology (Oxford: New Internationalist, 2016). “Double Men.” Reader, I Married Him (London: HarperCollins UK, 2016). “The Sack.” Africa 39. Ed. Ellah Allfrey (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). “The Book of Faces.” n+1 July 2014. “Bottoms Up.” Tin House 51.13 (Spring 2012). Reprinted in WinkPoke (Plympton, 2014). “The Man with the Hole in his Face.” Caine Prize Anthology (Oxford: New Internationalist, 2011). “Muzungu.” Callaloo 30.4 (Fall 2007). Reprinted in The Uncanny Reader (St. Martins, 2014). Book reviews Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King (Norton, 2019). NYT Book Review (cover), Oct 13, 2019. Jennifer Makumbi, Kintu (Transit, 2017). New York Review of Books Daily Sept 12, 2017. Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon (Saga, 2015). Public Books Apr 1, 2016. Reprinted in Think in Public: A Public Books Reader (Columbia UP, 2019). Toni Morrison, God Help the Child (Knopf, 2015). San Francisco Chronicle May 28, 2015. Dinaw Mengestu, All Our Names (Knopf, 2014). San Francisco Chronicle April 18, 2014. Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country (Penguin, 2012). San Francisco Chronicle Nov 2, 2012. V.S. Naipaul, The Masque of Africa (Knopf, 2010). San Francisco Chronicle Nov 14, 2010. Ilan Stavans, Becoming Americans (Library of America, 2009). San Francisco Chronicle Nov 22, 2009. N AMWALI S ERPELL – 3 – PUBLICATIONS Film reviews “The Rest of Us: Mata Diop’s Atlantique.” The Nation Nov 18, 2019. “Uncanny Valleys: The Mixed Metaphors of Jordan Peele’s Us.” The Nation April 22, 2019. “Beastly: The Bad Women of The Favourite.” New York Review of Books Daily Dec 9, 2018. “Sorry to Bother You: Boots Riley’s Trojan Horseplay.”New York Review of Books Daily July 21, 2018. “Black Panther: Choose Your Weapons.” The New York Review of Books Daily February 22, 2018. “Blade Runners’ Immaterial Girls.” The New York Review of Books Daily Oct 20, 2017. “Double Consciousness and Zombies: Jordan Peele’s Get Out.” Public Books May 23, 2017. “Skin Her: Under the Skin and Her.” n+1 21 (Winter 2015). Nonfiction essays “Easter Tourist.” The Bare Life Review Vol. 3, November 2019. “Migratory Patterns.” Fairlady South Africa June 1, 2019. “Dark Horse: Game of Thrones and Lil Nas X.” New York Times Magazine Apr 7, 2019. “The Afronaut Archives: Reports from a Future Zambia.” Public Books March 28, 2019. “Beauty Tips from My Dead Sister.” BuzzFeed March 27, 2019. “On Black Difficulty: Toni Morrison and the Thrill of Imperiousness.” Slate March 26, 2019. “When Science Fiction Comes True.” The New York Times Book Review March 12, 2019. “The Banality of Empathy.” New York Review of Books Daily March 2, 2019. “Angela Davis brings her radical message to SF.” San Francisco Chronicle January 11, 2019. “Copywrongs: Disney Trademarks ‘hakuna matata.’” The Guardian Dec 21, 2018. “Michelle Obama attracts thousands to San Jose.” San Francisco Chronicle Dec 15, 2018. “Petty Reading: A Year in Reading.” The Millions Dec 13, 2018. “The Empathy Exams: Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Bookforum Summer 2018. “Becoming an American Citizen in the Age of Trump.” L.A. Times Sept 21, 2017. “Glossing Africa.” The New York Review of Books Daily August 21, 2017. “White Men.” Off Topic. Reprinted on Longreads June 6, 2017. “The ‘Afronaut’ Who Wanted to Join the Space Race.”The New Yorker March 11, 2017. “Liberian Girl.” Playbill, Eclipsed by Danai Gurira. The Curran, San Francisco. March 7-19, 2017. “Turquoise, A Catalogue.” Cabinet 60 (Winter 2015-16). “Zambians don’t care about our new president’s skin colour.” The Guardian Oct 30, 2014. “Tractatus Doctoro-Philosophicus.” Should I Go to Grad School? (Bloomsbury, 2014). “A Sunburst Above a Receding Road.” The Believer 8.4 (May 2010). “Be the Flower in the Gun” (co-written with Maggie Miller). Bidoun 17 (Spring 2009). MEDIA The Old Drift. Selected interviews, March-August 2019. TV: Buzzfeed News AM2DM (Isaac Fitzgerald). Radio: NPR: Weekend Edition, BBC Radio 4, The Avid Reader, Fully Booked, Reading Women. Print: The New Yorker (Isaac Chotiner), The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Cut, Longreads, Kirkus, Electric Literature, PEN, LARB. “Being an Alien.” Interview. PBS NewsHour: Brief But Spectacular. February 16, 2016. “Africans in Space.” Interview. BBC World Service: The Documentary. Oct 23, 2016. “The Sack,” 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing. Selected interviews, July-Dec 2015. TV: SaharaTV, BBC Africa. Radio: BBC4, Front Row, World; Radio France, NPR, Chapter & Verse. Print: Elle (SA), Huck Magazine, Nkwazi, Record & Bulletin, The Independent, The Guardian. “Uncertainty.” Interview. BBC World Service: The Forum. Oct 12, 2014. N AMWALI S ERPELL – 4 – SELECTED TALKS “Notes on Reading.” Invited Keynote. Cambridge, MA. Harvard Mellon School. June 15, 2020. “Why I Love-Hate American Psycho.” Love etc. Invited Keynote. Odense, Denmark. Oct 3, 2019. “Ima Read: American Psycho.” Case Western Reserve. Invited Talk. Cleveland. March 30, 2018. “Black Matters.” Summer Forum for Inquiry + Exchange. O’ahu, July 12, 2017. “How We Read Faces.” UCLA Kanner Lecture. Invited talk. Los Angeles, May 2, 2017. “Black Matters.” The Organist: A McSweeney’s Radio Podcast. San Francisco, April 15, 2016. “A Heap of Cliché.” The Contemporary Conference. Princeton, March 5, 2016. “Faceless Books.” ACLA: Graphic Reading. Seattle, March 28, 2015. “Strong Criticism.” MLA: 20th-century American Literature Roundtable. Vancouver, Jan 9, 2015. “‘What is Value?’” MLA: J.M Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus. Vancouver, Jan 9, 2015. “Seven Modes of Uncertainty.” Harvard American Colloquium. Cambridge, Nov 24, 2014. “Stretching Your Voice.” ScholarMatch, July 30, 2014. 826 Valencia, August 5, 2014. “Cliché and the Heap.” ACLA: Circulation & Metamorphosis of Affect. New York, March 20, 2014.
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