Assistant professor (on faculty since Fall 2006)
Campus address:
Phillips Memorial Library LL26
Phone: 401-865.2802
E-mail: tvalkeak@providence.edu
Office hours, Fall 2009:
Tue 1:30-2:30 p.m., Wed 2:30-3:30 p.m., Thu 10-11 a.m., and by appointment (9/15-12/10).
Education:
Ph.D. (English), University of Helsinki, Finland, 2004.
M.A. & M.Phil. (African American and American Studies), Yale University, 2005.
B.Th., M.Th., M.A., Lic.Phil., University of Helsinki.
Scholarly interests:
Black Anglophone literatures, especially African American and Afro-Caribbean fiction and autobiography; postcolonial literatures; American literature; race and ethnicity.
Courses in Fall 2009:
Twentieth-Century African American Literature
Development of Western Civilization 201 (005 & 006)
Independent Study: Toni Morrison
Other courses taught at PC:
Seminar: The Black Body in African American Literature
Postcolonial Literature and Theory
Colonial and Federal U.S. Literature
Introduction to Literature
Development of Western Civilization 202
Independent Study: The Fiction of John Edgar Wideman
Publications:
Book:
Religious Idiom and the African American Novel, 1952-1998 (University Press of Florida, 2007).
Selected Articles:
"African American Novel." In: Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel, ed. Peter Logan et al. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, forthcoming 2010 (accepted).
"Between Camps: Paul Gilroy and the Dilemma of Race." In: Post-National Enquiries: Essays on Ethnic and Racial Border Crossings. Ed. Jopi Nyman. Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. 8-29.
"Huck, Twain, and the Freedman's Shackles: Struggling with Huckleberry Finn Today," Atlantis, Vol. 28.2 (December 2006), 30-43.
"Through a Black Traveler's Eyes: Claude McKay's A Long Way from Home," American Studies in Scandinavia, Vol. 38:1, 2006, 78-98.
"The Politics of Perception in Herman Melville's Benito Cereno and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage," Studies in American Fiction, 33:2 (Autumn 2005), 229-250.
"'Luxuriat[ing] in Milton 's Syllables': Writer as Reader in Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road." In: Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present. (Series: Studies in Book and Print Culture). Eds. Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 192-214.
"Beyond the Riverside: War in Toni Morrison's Fiction," Atlantic Literary Review 4.1-2 (January-March & April-June 2003), 133-164.
"A 'Cry of the Dying Century': Kate Chopin, The Awakening, and the Women's Cause." NJES (Nordic Journal of English Studies) 2.1 (2003), 193-216.
"Secular Riffs on the Sacred: Religious Reference in Invisible Man," in Crossings: A Counter-Disciplinary Journal of Philosophical, Cultural, Historical, and Literary Studies 5/6 (2002/2003), 235-267.
"Toni Morrison Writes B(l)ack: Beloved and Slavery's Dehumanizing Discourse of Animality." Atlantic Literary Review 3.2. (April-June 2002), 165-187.
Recent Conference Presentations (2005-08):
"Disillusionments in the Heart of Empire: Novels of the Black Caribbean Immigrant Experience in Post-World War II Britain." MESEA (Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas) 2008. Leiden, The Netherlands. June 25-28, 2008.
"Interrogations of 'Home': The Ambiguities of Return in Caryl Phillips's Early Fiction." ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) 2008. Long Beach, California. April 24-27, 2008.
"Roots, Routes, and Returns: Literary Journeys Back to the Caribbean." NEMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) 2008. Buffalo, New York. April 10-13, 2008.
"Passages to (Be)Longing: Recent Literary Portraits of the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States." CEA (College English Association) 2008: Passages. St. Louis, Missouri. March 27-29, 2008.
"Black Diaspora as an Idiom of (Be)Longing." Symposium "Post/National Enquiries: Borders, Migrants and the State," organized by MESEA (Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas). University of Joensuu, Finland. June 15-16, 2007.
"Spiritual Leadership and Secular Salvation in Octavia Butler's Parables." NEMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) 2007. Baltimore, Maryland. March 1-4, 2007.
"The Dilemma of 'Return' in Black Diasporic Fiction." MELUS (Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.) 2006: Crosscurrents: Navigating the Mainland and the Margins in U.S. Ethnic Literatures. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida. April 27-30, 2006.
"Mapping the Black Atlantic: Caryl Phillips's Geographies of Movement and Migration." CEA (College English Association) 2006: Reading the Regions/Writing the Regions/Teaching the Regions. San Antonio, Texas. April 6-8, 2006.
"A Violent Vision: Leon Forrest and the 'Black Christ' Tradition." NEMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) 2006. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. March 2-5, 2006.
"'A Theater of Transformations': The Politics of Perception in Charles Johnson's Middle Passage." ALA (American Literature Association) 2005. Boston, Massachusetts. May 26-29, 2005.
"Healer, Heal Thyself: Spiritual Leadership in Gayl Jones's The Healing." CEA (College English Association) 2005: Space(s). Indianapolis, Indiana. March 31-April 2, 2005.
"The Diasporic 'Word' and Vision in John Edgar Wideman's The Cattle Killing." ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) 2005: Imperialisms-Temporal, Spatial, Formal. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania. March 11-13, 2005.