Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

Return to: College of Liberal Arts | U of M Home

One Stop Directories Search U of M

CALENDARCONTACT HOME

ABOUT

FACULTY

PEOPLE


	visiting scholars

	grad students

	staff

UNDERGRADUATE

GRADUATE

GLBT STUDIES

FEMINIST MEDIA CENTER

NEWS & EVENTS

MAKE A GIFT

EMPLOYMENT

PhD Students - Helen J. Crump

E-mail: crum0046@umn.edu

Background
Southern girl, PK, raised in the “bible belt” of MS – a black feminist in the making, trying to live a life of contradictions. I've a poetic heart, a singing spirit, and a fabricated mind; I'm praying to keep them alive, loving, and creating.

Education
Feminist Studies Doctoral Candidate, Minor in African American and African Studies, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Expected 2006
M. A. 2000. Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS (English, Minor in Women's Studies)
B. A.1995. Jackson State University, Jackson, MS (English, Minor in Education)

Research interests
African Diaspora Studies, Black Women's Fiction, Constructions of Identity and Black Womanhood, Black Feminist Theory, Identity and Home in Black Women's Fiction

Awards

Graduate Research Partnership Program Grant, College of Liberal Arts – U of M, Summer 2003
Africana Summer Institute Fellow, Africana Studies Research Center – Cornell University, Summer 2003
Women's Studies Travel Grant, Department of Women's Studies - U of M, May 2002
Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies Travel Grant, Department of Women's Studies - U of M, April 2002
MacArthur Scholar Fellowship, MacArthur Interdisciplinary Program on
Global Change, Sustainability and Justice – U of M, Fall 2001-present
DOVE Fellowship, Graduate School – U of M , 2001-2002
Academic Scholarship, W.E.B. DuBois Honors College – Jackson State University, 1991-1995

Community and/or University Activities
(I'm out looking for my activism.)

Publications or Presentations

“Black Feminist Perspectives and the African Diaspora: A Consideration for Literary Analysis.” Warpland: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas, 9.2 (Fall 2003): 93-104.
“Black (Not) Like Me: Exploring Black Feminist/Womanist Perspectives in Reading the African Diaspora: Considerations for Literary Analysis” Paper in panel, CLA Conference, March 23-25, 2003.
“Having the Same Conversation with Different Voices: Black Feminism/Womanism and African Diasporic Literature” Paper in panel, Black Women’s Studies Conference, Purdue University
–W. Layfayette, IN, February 25-28, 2003.
“Flashb(l)ack - Becoming the Other to Save the Self: Identity in Octavia Butler’s Kindred” Paper in panel, Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Conference – Madison, WI, May 2002.

Courses Taught

Instructor, Women's Studies (U of M) – Race, Class, and Gender: Women's Lives in the US, Summer 2004
Teaching Assistant, Women’s Studies (U of M) – Women’s Contemporary Fiction, Professor: Amy Kaminsky, Spring 2004
Teaching Assistant, Women’s Studies (U of M) – Gender and Global Politics, Professor: Amy Kaminsky, Fall 2003
Teaching Assistant, Women’s Studies (U of M) - Women Write the World, Professor: Amy Kaminsky, Spring 2003
Teaching Assistant, Women’s Studies (U of M) - Introduction to Women's Studies, Professors: Gwendolyn Pough and Heidi Schumacher, Fall 2002
Lecturer, English (Mississippi State) - English Composition I & II, Fall 2000 -Spring 2001
Instructor, English (Mississippi State) – English Composition II, Fall 1999 -Spring 2000
Instructor, English (Mississippi State) – English Composition I, Fall 1998 -Spring 1999

Favorite Course and Why?
My favorite course engages a multi-media approach to learning and recognizes the value of diversity. It encourages students to draw on their own talents, interests, lived experiences as part of the learning process. In the classroom or other learning space, the instructor plays the main facilitator; however, as participants in the class, the students become co-facilitators, responsible for advancing knowledge production. They become co-conspirators in their education. Of course, because my own interests encompass literature and analysis, then my favorite course reads, examines, and critiques fiction.

Dissertation title and abstract
"Gender, Diaspora, Home: Identity and Place in African Diasporic Women's novels"

Using black feminist analysis and fiction as theory frameworks, I contend that black women writers engage diaspora, using narratives of motherhood, home (place and belonging), and migration experiences, as a critical cultural framework for articulating black women's identities and exploring black women's identity formation. Here, African Diaspora refers to the dispersal of Africans from Africa and contemporary migrations of African descendants worldwide. And the African diasporic novel engages diaspora as transcending national boundaries and extending cultural linkages through character development, narrative structure, and familial connections.

Specifically, my dissertation contributes to developing critical analyses of black women's literature, especially within the genre of African diasporic women's fiction. It extends studies on the evolving meanings of diaspora and diaspora identities. It attenuates efforts of black women writers and critics to highlight black women's voices and employs their narratives as part of the conversation on the construction of the diaspora. My project analyzes cross-cultural representations of identity formation. It focuses on how identity is presented within black women's writings. My research not only engages novels that use the diaspora to structure their narratives or that explore the development of the African Diaspora from various perspectives, but also it analyzes novels that use diaspora to establish a framework for explicating facets of identity formation among black women. Ultimately, my dissertation continues to complicate our consciousness of the African Diaspora, black women's experiences, and black
feminist analyses, as well as how interconnections of these categories suggest strategies for reading black women's fiction.

Ford Hall Church Street Southeast MinneapolisMN p f e