Department of English

Kameelah Martin

Professor and Dean of the Graduate School



Kameelah L. Martin‘s scholarly expertise sits at the crossroads of African Diaspora literature(s) of the U.S. and Caribbean and folklore studies.

As a cultural studies scholar, she is trained in the African American literary and vernacular traditions with emphasis on twenty and twenty-first century prose. Her interdisciplinary reach also involves broader interests, such as comparative literature(s) of the African Diaspora.  She is deeply committed to the fields of African Diaspora Studies, Literature, Folklore, and Film Studies.  As such, her research and teaching interests fall widely under this individualized humanities-based umbrella. Within her scholarship, she has explored such topics as the conjure woman as an archetype; the performance of African spirituality in visual media; eco-critical perspectives on water as a trope in Africana cultural memory; the preservation of Gullah Geechee heritage and folk beliefs; as well as African American genealogy.

In 2013, Palgrave McMillan published her first monograph Conjuring Moments in African American Literature: Women, Spirit Work, & Other Such Hoodoo which engages how African American authors have shifted, recycled, and reinvented the conjure woman figure primarily in twentieth century fiction. Dr. Martin is also the author of Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics: African Spirituality in American Cinema (Lexington 2016) which explores the treatment of the priestess figure in American cinema.  She served as Book Review Editor of the College Language Association Journal and has published in South Atlantic Review, Studies in the Literary Imagination, Black Women, Gender, & Families, as well as the African American National Biography.  She has held faculty positions at Georgia State University, the University of Houston, and Savannah State University.

For more information and access to full text publications, please visit www.Kameelahmartin.org

Education

Ph.D.     Aug 2006              Florida State University, African American Literature & Folklore

MA         June 2003            University of California Los Angeles, Afro-American Studies

BA          Dec 2000              Georgia Southern University, English; Africana Studies minor