Contact: cward@hawaii.edu
My scholarly interests include West African literature and culture; postcolonial studies; popular, oral, and performance studies; the novel and narrative theory, and contemporary theoretical criticism. I am also interested in modes of projecting subjectivity, technologies of literacy, and the politics of representation.
Publications
ARTICLES "Truth, Lies, Mules, and Men: Recalibrating the Optics of Hurston's 'Spy-glass of Anthropology,'" Western Journal of Black Studies 36:4 (December 2012). 301-313. "'All the signs of possession': Love & Death in Their Eyes Were Watching God." Zora Neal Hurston, Haiti, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Ed., La Vinia Delois Jennings. Northwestern UP, 2013. 215-236. "Twins Separated at Birth?: West African and Western Avant Garde Performativity," Performance: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. Ed., Philip Auslander. Routledge: 2003. 359-381 (Reprinted in anthology on Performance Studies) African Visual Culture: Minding a Fractal World," Politics and Culture: 2, 2003. Online Journal, http://aspen.conncoll.edu/politicsandculture. Imagining Reality/Realizing Imagination: Proceedings of the 1998 Conference on Literature and Hawai`i's Children. Co-editor with Suzanne Kosanke and Todd Sammons. Honolulu: Literature and Hawai`i's Children, 2000. "Mom, Can I Watch Betty Boop?: Changing Perceptions of Cartoons, Kids, and Culture," Imagining Reality/Realizing Imagination. Eds. Suzanne Kosanke, Todd Sammons, Cynthia Ward. Honolulu: Literature and Hawai`i's Children, 2000. 114-120. "From the Suwanee to Egypt, There's No Place Like Home," PMLA 115:1 (January 2000): 75-88. "Bound To Matter: The Father's Pen and Mother Tongues." The Politics of (M)Othering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature. Ed., Obioma Nneameka. London: Routledge, 1997. 114-129. "Reading African Women Readers," Research in African Literatures 27:3 (Fall 1996): 78-85. "Twins Separated at Birth?: West African and Western Avant Garde Performativity," Text and Performance Quarterly 14:4 (October 1994): 269-288. "African Women Readers in the Contact Zone." ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center). U. S. Department of Education. Summer 1994. "Determining the Cultural Value of Little Girls." Literature and Hawaii's Children: Stories: Bridges to Many Realms." Eds. Judith Kellogg and Jesse Crisler. Honolulu: Literature and Hawaii's Children, 2000. 143-149. "What They Told Buchi Emecheta: Oral Subjectivity and the Joys of 'Otherhood.'" PMLA 105:1 (January 1990): 83-97. "The Rising of the Bones." Modern Fiction Studies 34:1 (Spring 1989): 121-135.Areas of Interest
Critical theory, postcolonial literature, popular culture, oral and performance theory, the novel, orality and performance, west African/African diasporic oral and popular traditions,comparative visual cultureAwards
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute (Participant)
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers Stanford University Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Visiting Scholar National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Directorship Mellon Dissertation Fellowship Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities Stanford Graduate Fellowship Stanford University Scholar Fellowship Sigurd Burckhardt Prize, UCSD Dept. of Literature Senior Honors Thesis Award