areas of
study/
English
African
American Studies
Women's
Studies
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My
research interests involve the study of African American literature
and culture and its connections to the African diaspora and women’s
studies. My primary focus ranges from the early 20th century through
the present, and includes a grounding in the major African-American
literary, theoretical, and social movements in the United States,
as well as background in feminist and post-colonial theories.
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dissertation/
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'Mama's Gun':
Black Mothers as Site of Radical Imagination in the Post-Civil Rights
Era
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Using postmodern
and feminist theoretical frameworks, most significantly black feminist
literary theory and performance theories, I examine the period from
the Civil Rights era to the contemporary moment by engaging African-American
literary texts, visual culture, and performances that grapple with
the symbol of "mother." In this period, the dominant images
of black women in mothering roles -- The Mammy and The Matriarch --
give way to newer representations of black mothers, such as Baby Mamas,
Hootchie Mamas, and Big Mamas. These controlling images, a term borrowed
from Patricia Hill Collins, have been vital in justifying and organising
new discriminatory social practices during the past 35 years. Controlling
images also work within African-American communities as the foundation
for a number of class-based exclusions, marking the widening divide
between middle-class and poor black people.
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To engage with
these issues, I borrow the term "mama's gun" to employ as
a culturally relevant trope to describe how black mothers are radically
imagined as verbally and vocally resistant toward dominant ideologies
that use and abuse their bodies, experiences and images. This trope
is derived from a number of intersecting sources: literature, popular
culture (the second CD release of singer Erykah Badu is entitled Mama's
Gun) and oral histories from my own family.
Illustration at
left: The Liberation of Aunt Jemima by Betye Saar (1972)
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major literary
and cultural texts/
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Brown Girl,
Brownstones (1959) Paule Marshall; "A Raisin in the Sun"
(1959) Lorraine Hansberry; The Color Purple (1982) Alice Walker;
Push (1996) Sapphire; Corregidora (1975) Gayl Jones;
Dawn (1987) Octavia Butler; and the stage and film performances
of Tyler Perry
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