Ph.D. Student Profiles

Menoukha Case
Ph.D. English, University at Albany, SUNY, Fall 2007.
M.A. Women’s Studies, University at Albany, SUNY
M.A. English, University at Albany, SUNY B.A. Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, SUNY Empire State College A.S. Columbia-Greene Community College

Dissertation Title:
“Ori and the Ethical Subject: Pro-Indigenous Readings of African Diaspora Literature in Yoruba.”

Research Interests:
Interdisciplinary Transnational Approach to African and African Diaspora Arts as Activism, including Postcolonial and Global Feminisms, Literary and Film Studies, Yoruba Philosophy and Art; Feminist and Liberatory Pedagogy

Select Publications:

• Review of Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Aje in Africana Literature, by Teresa N. Washington, Indian University Press, for Journal of Western Folklore, special Afro-Latino issue, forthcoming
• “Empathy as Resistance in Two Feminist Futurist Novels by Marge Piercy and Octavia Butler,” Writer’s Institute Newsletter, University at Albany, 2003
• “Wade in the Water: A Tribute to Marlon Riggs,” visual poem in Fingernails Across a Chalkboard: A Literary and Artistic View of HIV/AIDS Affecting People of Color,                Randall Horton, Michael Hunter, and Becky Thompson, ed., Third World Press, 2007

Select Conference Presentations:

• “Zami, ‘Head Praise,’ and the Autobiographical Split: from Dichotomous to Polycentric Self,” NeMLA: Panel Chair, “Reading in Yoruba,” 2006
• “Precolonial Deities, Postcolonial Lives: Dreaming Yemoja in Cuban,” NeMLA: “Religious Discourse & Cultural Renewal in Contemporary Latino Fiction,” 2005
• “Gelede: Revelation of Women through Art in Yorubaland”, 7th Annual Conference of Association for Research on Mothering (ARM): “Mothering, Religion and Spirituality,” York University, Toronto, Canada, 2003  

Select Fellowships and Awards:
Richard Thorns Dissertation Fellowship, 2007
Eugene Garber Short Fiction Award, 2006
Graduate Student Organization Leadership Award, 2005

Select Teaching Experience:

• ENG/WSS 386: ‘History’ & ‘Fiction’: Double-Dutch Readings of African American Women Writers
• ENG 300Z: Biomythography With/In/Out Communities
• WSS/AAS/LACS 240: Classism, Racism, Sexism: Coalition Practice and Theory
• ENG/WSS 226: Arab Women’s Writing CAS 198: West African Culture in Diaspora

Email Address: menoukha@gmail.com