bbe6 Southwestern University: Profile

English

Carina Evans

Assistant Professor of English

Areas of expertise

African American Literature and Culture / Feminist Studies / Race & Ethnic Studies



Carina Evans specializes in African-American literature and culture.  Her courses include topics in African-American literature, U.S. ethnic literatures, and American literature more broadly. She also teaches in the Feminist Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, and First-Year Seminar Programs.

Her research is on neo-slave narratives, focusing on works written by Octavia Butler, Charles Johnson, Toni Morrison, Ann Allen Shockley, and Sherley Anne Williams.  Her manuscript, Loving Blackness: The Neo-slave Narrative and Contemporary Revisions of Slavery, interrogates the ways in which contemporary novels about slavery represent romantic love as a strategy for healing the trauma of enslavement. 

She also studies the literature and history of enslavement in Central Texas, and more information about her recent research endeavors can be found here: "Hidden History: Southwestern English Professors are Researching and Sharing the History of Slavery in Williamson County"


Education

MA/PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara 2009

Teaching Philosophy

"The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom." (bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress. Education as the Practice of Freedom)


Courses: Spring 2013

Survey of American Literature
Survey of American Literature
Black Women Writers

Previous Courses

Race and Ethnicity in American Literature

Texas Slavery

American Neo-slave Narratives

Capstone: Theorizing Identity and Inequality

Survey of American Literature

Introduction to Literature

First-Year Seminar: Where Dreams Come True: A Cultural Analysis of the World of Disney

College Writing


Research

Representations of gender, romance, and family in slave and neo-slave narratives; the literature and history of enslavement in Central Texas


Publications

Loving Blackness: The Neo-Slave Narrative and Contemporary Revisions of Slavery. (Manuscript in progress)

"Fictive Imaginings: Constructing Biracial Identity in Danzy Senna's Caucasia;" Crossing Lines: Race and Mixed Race Across the Geohistorical Divide. Edited by Marc Coronado et al. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2005.

Seminars & Presentations

"A Kind of Family: Interracial Female Relationships in A Mercy." Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association Conference, Claremont, CA, 2011.

"Teaching Black Sexual Politics: African American Literature and the Liberal Arts." Associated Colleges of the South Women's and Gender Studies Conference, Richmond, VA, 2011.

"'Alien Procedures': Science Fiction and Slavery in Butler's 'Bloodchild.'" Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference, Honolulu, HI, 2010.

"'this / a Harlem done / took / a beating': Urban Pathology in Sapphire's Push." Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Conference, Scranton, PA, 2010.

"'You-all in this together': The Neo-Slave Narrative Friendship Plot in Dessa Rose." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, 2009.

"'An Uncommon Affinity': Queer Interracial Desire in Ann Allen Shockley's 'The Mistress and The Slave Girl.'" Associated Colleges of the South Women's and Gender Studies Conference, Memphis, TN, 2009.

"Revising Romance: Cultural Trauma and Love in Beloved." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, Riverside, CA, 2006.


Honors & Awards

Faculty-Student Research Grant 2012-2013

Mellon Integrated Scholarly Community Grant, 2010

Finalist for Southwestern University Teaching Award, 2010

UCSB Office of Residential Life Outstanding Educator Award, 2005

UCSB Pearl Butler Evans Award for Scholarship on African-American Literature, 2003

UCSB Doctoral Scholars Fellowship, 2000

Phi Beta Kappa, 2000

 


0