Erica Edwards, Associate Professor
Ph.D. Duke University

(951) 827-5301
erica.edwards@ucr.edu

Professor Edwards specializes in African American literature, gender and sexuality, and black political culture.  She is the author of Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) and is currently at work on a book on African American literature and the War on Terror.  Her work, published in such journals as American Quarterly, Callaloo, American Literary History, shows how contemporary African American literature challenges us to think in new ways about the relationships between African American narrative, American popular culture, and the contemporary history of black politics and black social movements.

Recent Courses:

• Black Queer Recoveries (English 277: Seminar in Genders and Sexualities).  Spring 2011.
• Ancient Scripture and the Literatures of the African Diaspora (English 100E).  Winter 2011.  African American Literature Since the Harlem Renaissance (English 138A).  Winter 2011.
• Introduction to Critical Methods (ENGL 102). Fall 2010.
• Major Authors (ENGL 128X: Toni Morrison). Spring 2009.
• Black Political Culture Since Reconstruction (ENGL 273: Seminar in Cultural Studies). Winter 2009.

Selected publications:

• “Something of a Beginning.” Review of What Was African American Literature? by Kenneth Warren. “What is African American Literature?: A Symposium.”  Los Angeles Review of Books, June 2011.  http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/6482760433/what-is-african-american-literature-a-symposium
•  “The Black President Hokum.” American Quarterly 63.1 (March 2011): 33-59.  http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/american_quarterly/v063/63.1.edwards.html
• Recapitulating the Yam: The Promise of African American Literary Studies at History’s End.” Forthcoming in American Literary History 22.2 (Summer 2010). http://alh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/ajq015
• “Moses, Monster of the Mountain: Gendered Violence in Black Leadership’s Gothic Tale.” Callaloo 31.4 (Winter 2008): 1084-1103. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/callaloo/v031/31.4.edwards.html