As we begin the semester, we're highlighting Bryn Mawr's newest faculty members. The College supports faculty excellence in both research and teaching and is committed to social justice and inclusion in the classroom and in the community at large.
Assistant Professor of English Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
My research focuses on explorations of gender, sexuality, and difference in literary cultures of the African diaspora. My current project, The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora, examines the politics of creative and poetic innovation in contemporary Afrodiasporic women's literature, art, and performance. I also explore similar questions of sexuality, race and embodiment in my own fiction and dramatic writing.
My scholarly and critical work has been published or is forthcoming in American Quarterly, Palimpsest: Journal of Women, Gender, and the Black International, The Scholar and Feminist, American Literary History, and others, and has received fellowship support from the SSRC, the Mellon Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. My fiction publications include work in Best New Writing, American Fiction, Callaloo, and others, and my creative work has received honors from Bread Loaf, Yaddo, The Center for Fiction, and the NEA. I am the author of a collection of short stories, Blue Talk and Love (Riverdale Ave 2015), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for fiction.
The English Department offers a wide range of courses in literatures of the English-speaking world, from medieval romances to contemporary novels and film. Students develop their own paths through the major, experimenting with historical periods, genres, forms and methodologies that might be unfamiliar, while also developing expertise in areas of specific interest to them.