The Department of English
BIOGRAPHY:
“‘Whether Beast or Human’: The Cultural Legacies of Dread, Locks, and Dystopia,” in Small Axe, sheds light on the racial exploitation of one of the most potent Caribbean symbols, dreadlocks. “Female Agency and Oppression in Caribbean Bacchanalian Culture: Soca, Carnival, and Dancehall,” in WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, focuses on the dramatic, public sexual performances coming out of what Paul Gilroy identifies as part of the compensatory politics of the subordinated within Black Atlantic culture. “Abroad at Home: Xenomania and Voluntary Exile in The Middle Passage, Salt, and Tide Running,” in the Journal of Caribbean Studies, revises and elaborates on the understanding of Caribbean alienation. “Creole Carnival: Unwrapping the Pleasures and Paradoxes of the Gift of Creolization,” in The Atlantic Literary Review, interrogates the efficacy of the emergent Caribbean poetics of creolization. Two Kinds of Utility: England’s ‘Supremacy’ and the Quest for Completion in David Dabydeen’s The Intended,” in Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, examines the Caribbean writer’s crucial confrontation with colonial literary models. “Caught in the Slips: Boundaries of C. L. R. James’ Imagination,” in the Journal of Caribbean Studies, concerns the lack of unity between historicists and poeticists in the Caribbean philosophical tradition, and the nostalgia for romantic ideals associated with the imperial order. These various matters coalesce in his book in progress on Caribbean ontology and the essential quest for reformation and transformation of the postcolonial subject. A more recent essay, forthcoming in Commonwealth Essays and Studies, revisits Chinua Achebe’s African trilogy, and censures Abiola Irele’s somewhat sacrosanct praise of alienation.
Education:
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles (2000)
M.A., University of California, Los Angeles (1997)
B.A., University of Southern California (1988)
Areas of Specialization:
African Diaspora/Black Atlantic literature and culture, especially Anglophone Caribbean, Black British, and African-American; Victorian and modern British; colonialism, neocolonialism, and postcolonialism.
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