EMPLOYMENT
Spelman College July 2025-Present
Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Black Queer and Sexuality Studies
Comparative Women’s Studies Program, Women’s Research and Resource Center
University of California, Irvine July 2021-June 2025
Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies
Affiliate Faculty Member, Culture and Theory Program March 2024-June 2025
University of Virginia, Charlottesville August 2021-August 2022
Postdoctoral Fellow at The Carter G. Woodson Institute
for African American and African Studies
EDUCATION
The Ohio State University, PH.D., 2021, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, M.A., 2016, Women’s and Gender Studies
Spelman College, B.A., 2013, English
TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS
Black feminism, Black women’s literature, Black sexuality studies, gender studies, Black popular culture, critical race and gender theory, Black speculative and magical realist fiction, literary and cultural criticism, Contemporary U.S. popular culture, sexual violence, racialized sexual violence
AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS
2024-25| University of California Underrepresented Scholars Junior Faculty Fellow
2024| UCI Building Intellectual Communities Grant – PI
2024| Nominated for the Dr. DeGallow Professor of the Year Award (UCI)
2024| Nominated for the Pedagogical Innovator Award (UCI)
2021-2022| Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies (BBQ+) Book Development Summer Institute
2021| SSRC Mellon Mays Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant
2020-2021| American Association of University Women American Dissertation Fellowship
2020| Honorable Mention for 2020-2021 Ford Dissertation Completion Fellowship
2019| SSRC Mellon Mays Predoctoral Research Grant
PUBLICATIONS
JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Being Toward Trauma: Theorizing Post-Violence Sexuality.” Rejoinder: Special Issue – Trauma – An Online Journal Published by the Institute for Research on Women, vol. 7, no. 1, 2022, https://irw.rutgers.edu/rejoinder-webjournal/issue-7-trauma/578-
being-toward-trauma-theorizing-post-violence-sexuality.
Joint authored with Fair, Freda L., “Erotic Illegibility and Desire in Representations of Black Sexuality.” American Quarterly, vol. 71 no. 1, 2019, p. 151-159.
BOOK REVIEWS
“Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being: Review.” Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, vol. 6, no. 1, 2017, pp.
137–140.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Why Don’t We Love These Hoes? Black Women, Popular Culture, and the Contemporary Hoe Archetype.” Black Female Sexualities. Eds. Trimiko Melancon and Joanne M. Braxton. New Brunswick: Rutgers New Brunswick, 2015. 89-99.
“I had to make my own path”: The Discipline-Defying Work of Wendy G. Smooth, Ph.D.” Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Lisa Beard, Lashonda R. Carter, Lisa Beard and Jessica Millward, eds. Conversations with Black Women in Politics: Using Oral History and Voice to Measure Impact, (Advance contract with State University of New York Press).
“Trauma and Arousal in the Archive: Black Women’s Sexuality, Gloria Naylor, and Bailey’s Café.” Critical Essays on Gloria Naylor. Eds. Suzanne Edwards, Mary Foltz, and Maxine Montgomery. University of Mississippi Press, 32pgs. (forthcoming 2025)
MANUSCRIPT-IN-PROGRESS
Reconfigurations: Race, Sexual Violence, and Representation
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE
DEPT OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES – ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Gender and the Law (Winter Quarter 2023)
Race and Magical Realism (Winter Quarter 2023; Winter Quarter 2024)
Topics in Queer Studies – Blackness, Gender, and Fatness (Spring Quarter 2023)
Image Problems – American Archetypes (Winter Quarter 2024)
Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture (Spring Quarter 2024)
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
THE CARTER G. WOODSON INSTITUTE & DEPARTMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND AFRICAN STUDIES – INSTRUCTOR
Magical Realism in Black Women’s Literature (AU 2021)
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
DEPT OF WOMEN’S, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES – INSTRUCTOR
Gender, Race, and Sex In Popular Culture (SU 2018)
DEPARTMENT OF WOMEN’S, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES (CROSS REGISTERED WITH DEPT. OF ENGLISH AND AFRICAN AND
AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES) – INSTRUCTOR
Black Women Writers- Texts and Contexts (SPR 2018; AU 2018; SPR 2019; SU 2019; SPR 2020; SU 2020)
DEPT OF WOMEN’S, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES – GRADUATE TEACHING ASSOCIATE
Gender, Sex, and Power – Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies (AU 2017)
THE MICHAEL V. DRAKE INSTITUTE FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING AT THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
Awarded AU 2020| Teaching endorsement in recognition of the successful completion of the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Meaningful Inquiry Workshop
MARION CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
HEALING BROKEN CIRCLES NONPROFIT, INC. – VOLUNTEER & INSTRUCTOR
Our World in Fiction: Gender, Social Status, and Race in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing Unburied, Sing (SPR 2019)
Black Women’s Magical Realism: from Lesley Nneka Arimah’s What It Means When A Man Falls from the Sky, Leone Ross’ Come, Let Us Sing Anyway & Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild & Other Stories
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, NEW BRUNSWICK
DEPARTMENT OF AMERICAN STUDIES – TEACHING ASSISTANT AND GRADER
History and Culture of Hip-Hop: (AU 2015)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND ACTIVITY
PAPERS PRESENTED
2024| “Longing to Tell: Black Women, Violence, and Testimony,” part of the Reckoning with Misogynoir panel at the 14th Annual Interdisciplinary African, African American, and Diaspora Studies Conference hosted by James Madison University,
February 10th 2022| “Evidence, Testimony, and Ridicule: Black Women’s Advocacy for Bodily Autonomy,” part of the Women’s Politics: Making a Way Out of No Way panel, National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference, Minneapolis, MN, November 12th
2017| “Impolite & Unimaginable Erotics: Representations of Enslaved African American Women’s Sexuality,” Department of Black Studies “This Is Not Your Grandfather’s Black Studies”: Centering Pleasure and Anti-Respectability as Methodology” Annual Conference, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, October 14th
2015| “20 Years After Sylvia Wynter’s “NHI.”: The Implosion of the Post-Racial Myth in America,” Department of Women’s
and Gender Studies Human Futures Graduate Conference, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, April 24th
2013| “Why Don’t We Love These Hoes?: Black Women, Popular Culture & the Contemporary “Hoe” Archetype,” Annual Research Day Conference, Spelman College, Atlanta, GA, April 19th
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
2023| Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program (MMGIP) Intergenerational Conference – Discussant for “The History and Future of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Program,” October 23rd
2022| Feminist Author Showcase I – Discussant for 37 Words: Title IX and 50 Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination, the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference, Minneapolis, MN, November 12th
2022| Gender and Sexuality Studies Roundtable Discussion at the 2022 UNCF/Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow Alumni Southeastern Regional Conference, Atlanta, GA, October 8th
2022| “New Directions in the Study of the Black South” Roundtable Discussion at the Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), Montgomery, AL, October 1st
2021| “UNCF/Mellon Fellows: Thought Leaders in the Academy Roundtable,” The 2021 UNCF/Mellon Mays Virtual Conference, Celebrating Mentorship and Scholarship, October 9th
2017| “The Profundity of Deep Southern Culture”: An Analysis of Queen Sugar and Moonlight,” National Women’s Studies Association Conference 2017, Baltimore, MD, November 16th
2017| “The Profundity of Deep Southern Culture”: An Analysis of Queen Sugar and Moonlight,” American Studies Association Conference, Chicago, IL, November 9th
PANELS MODERATED
2024| Black Bodies, Violence, and Popular Culture – Black Studies Cluster Annual Conference, The University of California, Irvine April 25th 2018| Panel 1: Mobility & Containment – Naming (In)Justice Symposium + Zine Workshop: Rights and Resistance Across Queer Migrations and Trafficking, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, October 18th
CAMPUS & DEPARTMENTAL TALKS
2020| “Word On the Street” 42nd Anniversary Community Conversation. OSU Black Student Association, Columbus, OH, February 26th
2017| “Pay It No Mind”: The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson,” Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, February 8th
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
2022| Visited the Gloria Naylor Archive at Lehigh University (on loan from Sacred Heart University) to perform NEH grant-funded research for the Critical Essays on Gloria Naylor edited anthology
2019| Graduate Research Assistant for Dr. Treva B. Lindsey, the Ohio State University, May – September – Compiled data of black women killed by police violence from 2000 to the present, a bibliography of black women scholars who have written about prison abolition and reform, and various spreadsheets compiling data about black women starring in film and television in the 1990s. 2018-2019| Graduate Research Assistant for Dr. Andreá N. Williams, the Ohio State University, October – April – Gathered research via microfilm, state and nationwide databases, and digital magazine archives.
2012| Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, the University of California, Los Angeles, June – August – Produced an original research project while mentored by Dr. Lisbeth Gant-Britton and Dr. Sarah Haley, which was revised and later submitted for publication in the 2015 Black Female Sexualities anthology (RU Press 2015).
INVITED TALKS
2020| Black Feminist Versuz – Black Feminist Kitchen Summer School, Resource Sharing Circle, Zoom Webinar, July 9th
2020| “Perhaps My Protest Looks Different”: A Panel Discussion. American Shakespeare Center, Zoom Webinar, June 19th
2020| Community Conversation: Women, Gender, & Sexuality, Lincoln Theater Association, Columbus, OH, March 26th (Postponed Due to COVID-19)
2018| Volunteer Lecturer on Sexual Assault with Mary Thomas and Deja Beamon, Richland Correctional Institute, Richland Ohio, February 28th
2018| Coffee & Conversation: WOC Speak on Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” Zora’s House Women of Color Co-Working Space, Columbus, OH, May 18th
SERVICE TO PROFESSION
Academic Press Reviews:
Taylor & Francis, UK, Book Proposal Reviewer, Summer 2023
Pennsylvania State University Press, Manuscript Reviewer
Forthcoming title on Gender Violence and Art, Fall 2022
Undergraduate Curriculum Review:
The University of Virginia, Department of African American and African Studies | Institutional Research and Analytics 2021-2022 Assessment: 3 in 1: Undergraduate Writing, Information Literacy, and Critical Thinking, February 2022
Academic Journals:
Educational Studies – A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, Reviewer
“When We See Us: The Interior Lives of Black Women Educators and Their Students Within Carceral Spaces” Special Issue, Fall 2023
Essays in Philosophy, Reviewer
“Care Ethics Otherwise” Special Issue, September 2022 Open Cultural Studies, Reviewer
“Black Girl Magic: Redefining New Black Feminist Thought” Special Issue, July 2021 – May 2022
There is No Hierarchy of Journals: Intersectional Feminist Perspectives, Reviewer
For the inaugural issue established by Intersections, the graduate student organization of the Ohio State University Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, 2018-2019
Conferences: National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA): Level 1 Conference Proposal Reviewer
For the NWSA Conference in Minneapolis, MN, November 12-15th, 2020 (Postponed 2yrs due to COVID-19)
DEPARTMENTAL AND UNIVERSITY SERVICE
2024-25 Academic Year| U-Teach Undergraduate Instructor Program Advisor (UCI) 2024| Search Committee for the Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines Coordinator (Committee Member)
2024| Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) Advisor (Graduating Senior)
2023-24 Academic Year| U-Teach Undergraduate Instructor Program Advisor (UCI)
2024| Faculty Affiliate, The Initiative to End Family Violence, UCI
2019| Booked N’ Busy Book Club, January – December
2017| Anti-Racism Committee Member, Spring Semester
2016-2019| Feminist Sex-Ed Presenter
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS AND MEMBERSHIPS
NATIONAL WOMEN’S STUDIES ASSOCIATION
AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION
SIGMA TAU DELTA ENGLISH HONORS SOCIETY
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SPELMAN ALUMNAE
Mahaliah A. Little 