Department of English Language and Literature
Directory
Qiana J Whitted
Title: | Professor |
Department: | English Language and Literature College of Arts and Sciences |
Email: | whitted@sc.edu |
Office: | HUM 518 |
Resources: | English Language and Literature African American Studies Program |
Education
Ph.D., Yale University, 2003
M.A., Yale University, 1999
B.A., Hampton University, 1996
Areas of Specialization
20th-Century African-American Literature and Culture
American Comics and Graphic Novels
Southern Literature
Recently Taught Courses
• African American Literature
• Introduction to Comics Studies
• Race, Gender, and Graphic Novels
• Slavery, Literature, and Culture
• Young Adult Literature
• Graphic Memoir
• Invisible Man and American Culture
Professional Accolades
• USC Russell Research Award in the Humanities & Social Sciences, 2022
• Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work, 2020
• Finalist, USC Farrar Award in Media & Civil Rights History, 2019
• USC Department of English Research Professorship, 2016
• USC English Department Teaching Award, 2012
• Provost Humanities Grant, University of South Carolina, 2012
• USC Institute for African American Studies Research Grant, 2010
• NAACP Andrew Billingsley Faculty Award, University of South Carolina, 2004
Service to the Profession
• Editor, Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society
• Series Co-Editor, “Cultures of Resistance,” University of South Carolina Press
• Chair, International Comic Arts Forum
Selected Publications
BOOKS
• Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in the Golden Age of American Comics, Rutgers University Press, 2023
• EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest. Rutgers University Press, 2019.
• Comics and the U.S. South. Co-edited with Brannon Costello. University Press of Mississippi, 2012.
• "A God of Justice?” The Problem of Evil in 20th Century Black Literature. University of Virginia Press, 2009.
CHAPTERS
• “All-Negro Comics and Counter-Histories of Race in the Golden Age,” in Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in the Golden Age of American Comics, Rutgers University Press, 2023
• Introduction to Black Panther (Penguin Classics Marvel Collection), Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, et. al., Penguin Classics, 2022
• “Blues Fallin’ Down Like Hail: Reading ‘The Sky is Gray’ as a Blues Narrative,” in
MLA Series: Approaches to Teaching Gaines’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
and Other Works. Ed. John Lowe and Herman Beavers, 2019.
• “Comics and Emmett Till,” in Picturing Childhood: Youth in Transnational Comics. Eds. Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis. University of Texas Press, 2017.
• “The Blues Tragicomic: Constructing the Black Folk Subject in McCulloch and Hendrix’s
Stagger Lee,” in The Blacker The Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. Eds. Francis Gateward and John Jennings. Rutgers University Press, 2015.
• “Black Culture, Speculative Fiction, and the Past as Text in Jeremy Love’s Bayou,”
in Essays on Teaching With Graphic Narratives. Ed. Matthew L. Miller. McFarland Press, 2015.
• “Of Slaves and Other Swamp Things: Black Southern History as Comic Book Horror,” Comics and the U.S. South. Eds. Qiana Whitted and Brannon Costello. University Press of Mississippi, 2012.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
• “‘And the Negro thinks in hieroglyphics’: Comics, Visual Metonymy, and the Spectacle
of Blackness,” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 5.1 (March 2014): 1-22.
• “In My Flesh Shall I See God: Ritual Violence, Racial Redemption, and Countee Cullen’s
‘The Black Christ’,” African American Review, 38.3 (2004): 379-393.
• “Using My Grandmother’s Life as a Model: Richard Wright and the Gendered Politics
of Religious Representation,” Southern Literary Journal, 36.2 (2004): 13-30.
REVIEWS
• “The Battle Scars of Angola Janga,” ASAP/J, Black One-Shot Series, 2020. http://asapjournal.com/b-o-s-9-3-angola-janga-kingdom-of-runaway-slaves-qiana-whitted/
• “To Flip and Move and Shine: Ebony Flowers’ Hot Comb,” The Comics Journal, Oct. 22, 2019. http://www.tcj.com/to-flip-and-move-and-shine-ebony-flowers-hot-comb/
• “Slavery Was No Opera: Alyssa Cole’s An Extraordinary Union,” Public Books, 2017. http://www.publicbooks.org/slavery-was-no-opera/
• Review of Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century-Storytelling by Jared Gardner, Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History, 42.2 (Spring 2013): 34-40.
• Review of Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible by Katherine Clay Bassard, Religion & Literature, 43.1 (Spring 2011): 207-209.
• Review of Middle Passage in Charles Johnson: Embracing the World. Ed. Nibir K. Ghosh and E. Ethelbert Miller. New Delhi: Authorspress. 2008
• Review of Religious Idiom and the African American Novel, 1952-1998 by Tuire Valkeakari, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters (31:3) Summer 2008: 961-966.