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Michelle M. Wright

Associate Professor of African American Studies

Address:
African American Studies Department
Crowe 5-129
1860 S. Campus Dr.
Evanston, IL 60208-2209

Phone: 847-467-5414

Fax: 847-491-4803

Email: michelle-wright@northwestern.edu

Research Interests:
Identity and Subject Formation in the African Diaspora
19th and 20th Century African American and Black European Literature and Culture
Poststructuralism and Race
Blackness intersected with Gender and Sexuality
Theories of Blackness
Murder Narratives
Addiction Literature
Theories of Time

Courses:
WINTER 2010 
AFAM 236 Introduction to African American Studies
Grad Course: Gender and Sexuality in the African Diaspora (course number TBA)

SPRING 2010  
AFAM 335 Race and Literature in the 19th Century: The Strange Case of the Tragic Mulatto   
AFAM 350 Af Am Lit Crit and Theory: On Being and Becoming Black

Degrees:
B.A in Comparative Literature from Oberlin College in 1992
Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan in 1997

Current Research:
Born and raised in Western Europe(and a brief stint in Rabat, Morocco), her research and pedagogy focus on the literature and philosophy of the African Diaspora, especially in the Anglophone, Francophone and Germanophone worlds.

Selected Publications:
Blackness and Sexualities. Edited volume for FORECAAST (Forum for European Contributions in African American Studies). Edited by Michelle M Wright and Antje Schuhmann. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2007.

Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. 

Reading the Black German Experience, edited with Tina M. Campt, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Duke University. A special issue of Callaloo: Journal of African American and African Literature. Volume 26, Number 2, 2003.

“Postwar Blackness and the World of Europe.” Österreichisches Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (Austrian Journal of History). Special Issue: blackness, transnational. 17.2 (2006) pp. 113-122.

“What is Black Identity?” Cahiers Charles V. Special Issue: L’Objet Identité: Épistémologie et Transversalité. No. 40 (2006) 135-51.

“Racism and Technology.” Invited submission. Switch: Social/Networks. San Jose State University, vol. 6, no. 2, February 2001.  

“Pale by Comparison: Black Liberal Humanism and the Postwar Era.” Invited submission for Black Europe and the African Diaspora. Anthology edited by Darlene Clark Hine, Stephen Small, and Trica Keaton. University of Illinois Press, 2009.

“A Brief History of African American Thought in the Twentieth Century”. Black Inc. Africanismi in America. Ed. E.S. Tiberini. Centro d’Informazione e Stampa Universitaria (CISU) Press, Rome (2007) 215-231. 

“Das Städtische Diaspora: Schwarze Bewußtseinen in Berlin, London und Paris” **(The Urban Diaspora: Black Subjectivities in Berlin, London and Paris). Der Black Atlantic. Edited by Paul Gilroy, Tina M. Campt and Fatima El-Tayeb. Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt Verlag (2004) 375-387.  **translation not my own.

Works in Progress:

The Physics of Blackness: Rethinking the African Diaspora in the Postwar Era