Kerry Manzo
Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature
Kerry Manzo (he, him, his) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Global Anglophone Literature. His current book project, titled Sex, Gender, and the Making of Postcolonial African Literature, offers a portrait of the continuous deployment of sex and gender in the making of contemporary West African literature from the emergence of modernist writing to the present-day emergence of LGBTQIA literature. Dr. Manzo is a recipient of the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship and the Harry Ransom Center Dissertation Fellowship. He completed his Doctorate in English at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX and his undergraduate and Masters degrees at the University of Texas at El Paso, on the U.S.-Mexico border.
More About Me
“I grew up in transnational communities–first as a child of an overseas military family and second as an adolescent and young adult in the borderlands community of El Paso, TX. I think this has given me a different perspective on culture, community, nation, and belonging that I bring to my teaching and research.”
Research Interests
African postcolonial literature, African LGBTQIA literature, South Asian postcolonial literature, South Asian transgender literature, U.S. multi-ethnic literature, Black Atlantic literature, queer theory, postcolonial theory, feminist theory, print cultures and archival research
Representative Courses
LIT 1150 Border Crossings
LIT 2305 Introduction to Contemporary Global Literature
LIT 2235 Animals and the Environment in Global Literature
LIT 2765 Child Soldier Narratives
LIT 3095 Literature of Race and Human Rights
LIT 3228 Decolonizing Sex and Gender
Publications
“Sublimations and Shadows: Sexual Politics of Ibadan Modernism in Black Orpheus.” Research in African Literatures, 52(3). December 2021.
“Queer Temporalities and Epistemologies of Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows and Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees.” African Literature Today 36: Queer Theory in Film & Fiction. November 2018.
“Making the Invisible Visible: Privilege, Shame, and Guilt in Midnight’s Children.” South Asian Review. 35(1). pp 169-187. 2014. Print.
“New Literatures: East Africa.” The Year’s Work in English Studies. In Press.
Presentations / Conferences
“Trans Positioning Efuru.” Roundtable: Queer African Studies in Motion, sponsored by the Queer African Studies Association, African Studies Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, November 2022.
“Trans* Bodies of/and (Neo)Colonial Subjects in African LGBT Activist Discourses.” Modern Language Association Conference, Toronto, ON, January 2021.
“Not Just Any Hijra Can Be A Citizen: Negotiating Forms of State Control in Two Hijra Memoirs.” Modern Language Association Conference, Toronto, ON, January 2021.
“Black Orpheus and the Persistence of Colonial Gender and Sexual Politics in Postcolonial Small Magazine Publishing.” Modern Language Association Conference, Seattle, WA, January 2020.
“Sexual Knowledge-Power and the Postcolony: The Case of Meribe v Egwu.” Modern Language Association Conference, Chicago, IL, January 2019.
“African Women’s Writing, Mbari, and the African Writers’ Series.” Modern Language Association Conference, New York, NY, January 2018.
“Not a Network, but a Rhizome: The Mbari Movement and the Internationalization of African Literature.” African Literature Association Conference, New Haven, CT, June 2017.
“What about the Child: Futurity and Queer Emergence in Nigerian Literature.” Modern Language Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA, January 2017.
“African Authenticity: A Discourse of Power.” African Literature Association Conference, Atlanta, GA, April 2016.
“American Bildung, Slave Narratives, and the Incomplete Project of Incorporation.” Texas Tech University Comparative Literature Symposium, Lubbock, TX, April 2016.
“Deterritorializing Heterosexist Flows in Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters.” UNC Asheville Queer Studies Conference, Asheville, TN, April 2015.
“Accounting for Cultural Relevancy in Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names.” Texas Tech University Comparative Literature Symposium, Lubbock, TX, April 2015.
“Capital and Cost: Afro and Afro-American Hair in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.” American Comparative Literature Association, New York, 2014.
“Metaphor and Metonymy in Novels of the Biafran War.” Texas Tech University Comparative Literature Symposium, Lubbock, TX, 2014.