Kerry Manzo

Assistant Professor of Global Studies

Chair of General Studies

Kerry Manzo (he, él) is an Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Chair of General Studies. In his research, he is interested in decolonial methods for thinking about sex/ual and gender diversity in 20th and 21st century African literature, including its institutions and histories. Building on established work in Global South feminisms, queer and trans theory, and postcolonial criticism, Dr. Manzo seeks to discern the effects of the cisheteronormativity implicit within coloniality on literary expression, publication, and reception of Anglophone African literature, while also seeking within that literature the signs of resistance that emerge when patriarchy, heterosexualism, and cisgenderism are denaturalized. Dr. Manzo is the recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies’ Pauline Yu Fellow in Comparative Literature, as well as the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship and the Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. His published articles have appeared in Research in African Literatures and African Literature Today, and he is currently preparing a chapter for Cambridge UP’s forthcoming Achebe in Context, titled “The Place of Discarded Stones: Sex and Gender in Achebe’s Works.” Dr. Manzo is a member of the Queer African Studies Association, a coordinate organization of the African Studies Association. He contributes annually to the research and writing for the Africa “New Literatures: Eastern Africa” section of The Year’s Work in English Studies. He earned his doctorate in Comparative Literature, Globalization, and Translation at Texas Tech University.

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

Books

In press. Queer Contiguities in/of Nigerian Literature, Michigan State University Press.

Refereed Journal Articles

2021 “Sublimations and Shadows: Sexual Politics of Ibadan Modernism in Black Orpheus,” Research in African Literatures

2018 “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

2014 “Making the Invisible Visible: Privilege, Shame, and Guilt in Midnight’s Children,” South Asian Review

Book Chapters

In preparation “The Place of Discarded Stones: Sex and Gender in Achebe,” Chinua Achebe in Context, Cambridge UP

Book Reviews

2024 “B Camminga and John Marnell, Eds. Queer & Trans African Mobilities: Migration, Asylum, & Diaspora. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. 264 Pp. Index. $26.95. Paper. ISBN: 9780755638994.” African Studies Review.

Presentations / Conferences

“Sex and Gender in Achebe’s Works,”  Achebe Redivivus, British Academy Conferences, All Souls College, University of Oxford. Summer 2025

“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.