Department of English

College of Humanities and Sciences

Current StudentsGive

Shermaine Jones

Shermaine M. Jones, PhD

Associate Professor

(804) 827-8324

Hibbs Hall, 900 Park Ave., room 324A

Literatures of Diversity

Education

  • PhD in English Language and Literature, University of Virginia, 2015
  • BA in African and African American Studies, Dartmouth College, 2006
  • BA in Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, 2006

Research Interests

  • African American Literature
  • Black Women's Literature of the Diaspora 
  • Black Feminist Theory
  • Affect Studies 

Select Publications

  • “‘Unbounded Grief’: Black Maternal Sorrow and the Literature of Slavery.” Gender in American Literature and Culture, edited by Jean M. Lutes and Jennifer Travis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, pp. 82–95. Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture.
  • "'Let Her Be Born & Handled Warmly’: Reflections on My Pregnancy Journey Preparing to Mother a Black Daughter.” CLA Journal, vol. 62, no. 1, 2019, pp. 86–95.
  •  “I Can’t Breathe!: Affective Asphyxia in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric.“ South Journal Vol. L Fall (2017): 37–45. 
  • “Presenting Our Bodies, Laying Our Case: The Political Efficacy of Grief and Rage During The Civil Rights Movement in Alice Walker’s Meridian.“ Southern Quarterly Journal 52. 1 Fall (2014):179–196. 

Courses

  • ENGL 620: Intertextuality: Black Feelings 
  • ENGL 499: On Blackness & Feeling 
  • ENGL 355: Black Women Writers of the Diaspora 
  • ENGL 366: Bearing Witness: Race, Identity, & African American Writing 
  • ENGL 379: African American Literature from the Beginnings Through the Harlem Renaissance 

Links