Contact: deh2@hawaii.edu
I am an Associate Professor whose primary teaching and research interests are late medieval and early modern English literary cultures, queer theory/gender studies, and contemporary queer African literatures. I am especially interested in interrelations between literature, sexuality, and economics, both in the past and present. Currently, I am finishing my first book manuscript entitled Winners and Wasters: Economic Narratives, Gender, and the Theater, c. 1350 - c. 1650, which examines the ways that late medieval and early modern drama represents the commercialization of England’s economy as well as the socio-cultural consequences that this economic transformation has on the social order and individual identities, especially gender, sexual, and racial identities.
Publications
- “Queer States: Beyond the Nomos of the Closet in Tendai Huchu’s The Hairdresser of Harare.” In Spatial Justice in the Postcolony, edited by Jaco Barnard-Naudé and Julia Cryssostalis. New York: Routledge, 2020 (forthcoming).
- “Women/Animals/Slaves: Race and Sexuality in Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675).” In Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies: A Critical Anthology, edited by Cassander L. Smith, Nicholas Jones, and Miles P. Grier. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018: 38 - 66.
- “Beyond Identity: Queer Affiliation and the Politics of Solidarity in Gordimer’s None to Accompany Me and Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams.” In Queer in Africa: LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship, and Activism, edited by Zethu Matebeni, Surya Monro, and Vasu Reddy. London: Routledge, 2018: 84 – 98
- Diversity in Human Sexuality: Implications for Policy in Africa. Co-authored with H. Dugmore, J. Coovadia, G. Grey, C. Breyer et alia. Pretoria: Academy of Science of South Africa, 2015.
- Contested Intimacies: Sexuality, Gender, and the Law in Africa, including the introduction “Imagining Intersections: Sexuality, Gender, Law, and the Politics of Solidarities”, eds. Derrick Higginbotham and Victoria Collis-Buthelezi. Cape Town: Siber-Ink Press, 2015.
- “The Construction of a King: Waste, Effeminacy, and Queerness in Shakespeare’s Richard II” Shakespeare in Southern Africa 26 (2014): 59 – 73.
- “Cardenio’s Three Rs: Revision, Rape, and Rank in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s ‘Lost Play’”. Shakespeare in Southern Africa 25 (2013): 61 – 72.
- “Producing Women: Textile Manufacture and Economic Power on Late Medieval and Early Modern Stages.” Comitatus 41 (2010): 183 – 206.
- “Impersonators in the Market: Merchants and the Premodern Nation in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament.” Exemplaria 19.1 (Spring 2007): 163 – 182.
Areas of Interest
- Late Medieval and Early Modern Theatre
- Literary History, Genre, and Cultural Change
- Shakespeare and his contemporaries
- Queer theory/Gender Studies/Feminist Theory
- Marxism, Materialism, and the New Economic Criticism
- Queer African Literatures
Education
- Ph.D, Columbia University
- Certificate in Feminist Scholarship, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Columbia University
- M.A., Columbia University
- M.A., Simon Fraser University
Courses
Spring Semester 2021
- ENG-331: Renaissance British Literature
Fall Semester 2020
- ENG-445: William Shakespeare
- ENG-780B: Sem Comparative Lit: African
Spring Semester 2020
- ENG-366: Shakespeare and Film
- ENG-775: Seminar in Cultural Studies
Spring Semester 2019
- ENG-332: Restoration/18th-C Lit in Eng
- ENG-445: William Shakespeare
Fall Semester 2019
- ENG-330: Medieval Literature
- ENG-482: Studies: Lit & Sexlty & Gender