American Literary Studies Welcomes Dr. Belinda D. Wallace as a Visiting Professor

American Literary Studies is happy to welcome Dr. Belinda Deneen Wallace as a Visiting Professor with a joint position in English and Africana Studies. Dr. Wallace received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park (2006) and held a postdoctoral fellowship in UNM’s Africana Studies Program from 2007 to 2009.

Dr. Wallace is a post-colonialist who specializes in contemporary Caribbean literature and culture.  As a postdoc fellow, she conducted archival research in Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, and Jamaica in order to advance her research agenda on literary representations of Caribbean revolutionary moments, children’s games as cultural memory, and the role of gender and sexuality in Caribbean nation building. She is currently at work on two projects: an article on the works of Trinidadian novelist Dionne Brand and her book manuscript, Revolutionary Lyricism and the Myth of Female Docility, which examines Afro-Caribbean women’s roles in Caribbean libratory and revolutionary movements.

As a graduate student, Dr. Wallace was the recipient of innovative and dynamic teaching that helped demystify learning, re-contextualized the role of knowledge in her life, and bridged the gap between formal education and public intellectualism. These experiences shaped her as a student and now drive her as a professor. In 2010-2011, she served as a lecturer for the Africana Studies Program and worked for the Division for Equity and Inclusion, where she identified and addressed barriers to Black/African American student and faculty recruitment and retention.

Dr. Wallace teaches Caribbean Women Writers, People and Cultures of the Circum-Caribbean, Blacks in Latin America, 19th and 20th Century African American literature, and Black Feminist Theory. She will be teaching English 297—Later American Literature in Spring 2012.