Laura T. Murphy

Education:

PhD 2008   Harvard University, African and African American Studies

MA 2008    Harvard University, English and American Literature 

MA 1998    Syracuse University, English and Textual Studies

BA 1996     Louisiana State University, English

Laura Murphy joined the Ithaca College English department in the Fall of 2008.  Her areas of specialization include West African literature, 19th and 20th century African American literature, slave and neo-slave narratives, theories of memory, and modern-day slavery.  She teaches courses in African and American literature and will teach Approaches to Literary Studies in the spring.  She is the advisor for the Ithaca College chapter of Free the Slaves, the first college chapter of the non-profit group dedicated to the abolition of modern-day slavery.  

Her book project entitled, "The Suffering of Survival: Metaphors of the Slave Trade in West African Literature," examines the representational strategies that West African authors have utilized to explore long-term memories of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  She has recently published articles on the literature of Amos Tutuola, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ama Ata Aidoo and Ernest Hemingway in Research in African Literatures, Studies in the Novel, The Journal of the African Literature Association, and in a collection of essay on Hemingway in Africa.  She also has an article forthcoming on the depiction of modern day slavery in the HBO television series, The Wire.  She also works as a consultant and organizer for Free the Slaves.

Courses:  (please see syllabi in documents folder)

Fall 2008

ENGL 105  Introduction to American Literature

ENGL 371  Studies in African American Literature: Slave Narratives, Past and Present

Spring 2009

ENGL 205  Approaches to Literary Studies

ENGL 485  Seminar in World Literature: African Literature and the Burdens of Memory

Fall 2009

ENGL 107 Introduction to Literature

ENGL 220 Black Women Writers 

Recent Publications:

“Narrating ‘White Slavery!’ in The Wire.”24/7 Believe: Watching The Wire. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

"Childless Mothers and Impotent Husbands: The Failure of Intimacy in Ama Ata Aidoo."  Research in African Literatures (Forthcoming, Fall 2009) 

“The Curse of Constant Remembrance: The Belated Trauma of the Slave Trade in Armah’s Fragments.”  Studies in the Novel 40:1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2008). Special Issue on Postcolonial Literature and Trauma.

“Into the Bush of Ghosts: Spectres of the Slave Trade in West African Fiction.” Research in African Literatures  38:4 (November 2007).

“An African Code In His Own Image: Hemingway’s Search for Authenticity on Safari.” Hemingway in Africa.  (Forthcoming, 2009).

“Olaudah Equiano.” Encyclopedia of Blacks in European History and Culture. Ed. Eric Martone. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008.

Contributor, 17 entries. African American National Biography. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr, and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Contributor, 3 entries. Encyclopedia of Modern Slavery. Ed. Junius P. Rodriguez. ABC-CLIO. (Forthcoming March 2009).

Works in Progress

The Suffering of Survival: Metaphors of the Slave Trade in West African Literature

Documenting Modern Slavery: A Collection of Modern Day Slave Narratives