Valorie Thomas

Associate Professor, English/Africana Studies

Education: B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (1999), University of California, Berkeley; M.F.A., Screenwriting, University of California, Los Angeles (1990)

Expertise: African Diaspora film/literature

With Pomona Since: 1998

Office: Crookshank Hall 209

Campus Phone: (909) 607-9242

Email: Valorie Thomas

 

Research Interests

Diasporic vertigo, African Diaspora literary & cultural theory, indigenous spirituality as decolonizing practice, vernacular culture and language, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Maya Deren, AfroFuturism, contemporary Native American literature

Recent Courses

• ENG 56 PO Contemporary Native American Literature
• ENG 67 PO Introduction to Literary Interpretation: Postcolonial Literatures in English
• ENG/AFR 124 PO AfroFuturism
• ENG/AFR 125C PO Introduction to African American Literature, 18th and 19th C
• ENG/AFR 130 PO Special Topics in 20th C. African Diaspora Literature: Healing Narratives
• ENG/AFR 140 PO Literature of Incarceration
• ENG/AFR 170J PO Toni Morrison

Selected Publications

• “The Break,” in Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness, Rebecca Walker, ed., Counterpoint Press (forthcoming, 2012)
• “Dust to Wash Themselves: Diasporic Disidentifications in Zeitoun” in Biography, Special issue: Life Stories from the Creole City, (forthcoming 2011)
• “Candomble’,” in The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today’s World,  SAGE Reference Project, eds. Stange, Mary Zeiss, Oyster, Carol K., Golson, J. Geoffrey, 2011
• “Call and Response (Il)literacy,” The Huffington Post, 12/9/2010
• “Mestiza Consciousness,”  in The Encyclopedia of Gender and Society, SAGE Reference Project, ed. Jodi O’Brien. Vol. 2, Winter 2008
• “Milkman Dead (The Bluest Eye).”  Students’ Encyclopedia of American Literary Characters.  M. J. Bruccoli and R. Layman, eds.  Columbia, SC: Manly, Inc., 2008
• “The Breedloves (The Bluest Eye).”  Students’ Encyclopedia of American Literary Characters.  M. J. Bruccoli and R. Layman, eds.  Columbia, SC: Manly, Inc., 2008
• “Placing Toni Morrison’s ‘Love’: African American and Women of Color Feminists Theorizing Embodiment, Home, and Memory,” International Journal of the Humanities, Common Ground Publishers, Victoria, Australia 2007
• “1+1=3 and Other Dilemmas: Reading Vertigo in Invisible Man, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and Song of Solomon,” African American Review, vol. 37, n. 1, Spring 2003
• “Keys to the Ancestors’ Chambers: An Approach to Teaching Beloved,” Reading Between the Black and White Keys: Deep Crossings in African Diaspora Studies, VeVe’ Clark, ed., St. Clair Drake Cultural Studies Forum, UC Berkeley, 1994

Selected Awards and Honors

• Draper Center First Annual Community Engagement Award, 2010
• NEH Summer Research Grant, 2006
• Irvine Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award, 2004-2005
• Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, 2002-2003

• University of Cape Town (Rondebosch, South Africa), Visiting Associate, Centre for African Studies, 2002