Dr. Judylyn S. Ryan

Contact Information

Office: Sturges 312
Phone: 740-368-3581
E-mail: jsryan@owu.edu

Specialty

African-American literature, cultural and critical race theory, Black feminist theory, Black women's cinema, African diaspora literatures and cinema.

M.A., Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison
A.B., Economics and English, Georgetown University

Biography

Professor Ryan is an interdisciplinary scholar who teaches courses on (African) American literature, Black feminist theory, Black women's literature and cinema, African diaspora literatures and cinema, and the Freshman Writing Seminar. Her other research interests are cultural and critical race theory, narrative theory, Toni Morrison, and African diaspora religions. Professor Ryan has been a visiting lecturer and research associate in the Women's Studies in Religion Program in the Divinity School at Harvard University, and has held a Ford postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania.  She is currently at work on two book projects.  The first combines theoretical analyses with pedagogical models and is titled Approaches to Teaching Black Women's Cinema.  The other combines bio-medical approaches to the study of diseases with methodologies derived from critical race theory and disability studies to develop and propose new models for understanding racism and race, and is titled The Epidemiology of Racism: Re-framing the Discourse on Race in the Age of Obama.  She is the volume editor for (and contributor to) Twenty-first Century Readings of Toni Morrison's Later Novels (forthcoming from Continuum Press in the Contemporary North American Fiction series).

Courses Taught

ENG 105, Freshman Writing Seminar
ENG 145, Reading America
ENG 150, Introduction to Literary Studies
ENG 224, African American Images
ENG 226, American Images
ENG 268, Black Women’s Literary Tradition
ENG 273, Approaches to African American Literature
ENG 369, Genre Studies in African American Literature
ENG 486, Seminar in American Literature

Major Publications

Spirituality as Ideology in Black Women's Film and Literature. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2005).

"Language and Narrative Technique in Toni Morrison's Novels."  In Justine Tally (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison.  (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 151-161.

"Outing the Black Feminist Filmmaker in Julie Dash's Illusions."  SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Beyond the Gaze: Recent Approaches to Film Feminisms Special Issue, (Vol. 30, No. 1) Autumn 2004: 1319-1344.

"Dismantling Slavery's Master-Narratives through African Diaspora Cinema."  In Kimberley  Phillips et al (Eds.), Critical Voicings of Black Liberation: Resistance and Representations in the  Americas, (Germany: Lit Verlag, 2003): 127-145.

"Jazz . . . On 'The Site of Memory'."  Co-authored with Estella Conwill Májozo.  Studies in the Literary Imagination, Toni Morrison and the American South Special Issue, (Vol.32, No.2) Fall 1998: 125-152.

"Spirituality and/as Ideology in Black Women's Literature:  The Preaching of Maria W. Stewart and Baby Suggs, Holy."  In Beverly Kienzle and Pamela Walker (Eds.), Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, (Berkeley: U of California P, 1998): 267-287.

"Morrison's Jazz: 'A Knowing So Deep'."   In Nellie McKay and Kathryn Earle (Eds.), Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Toni Morrison, (New York: MLA P, 1997): 154-160 .

"Contested Visions/Double-Vision in Tar Baby."  In Nancy J. Peterson (Ed.), Toni Morrison: Theoretical and Critical Approaches, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U P, 1997): 63-87.  Reprinted from Modern Fiction Studies, Toni Morrison Special Issue, (Vol. 39, Nos.3/4) Fall/Winter 1993: 597-621.

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