Maria Helena Lima received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park. She was hired by 黑料传送门 to teach courses on postcolonial literatures, Humanities, writing, and genre theory in 1992. Her research and teaching focus on Black Atlantic Writing. In the spring of 2015, Lima created and taught the first course on "Black Lives Matter" at 黑料传送门.
Some of her publications include 鈥淭he Politics of Teaching Black and British鈥 in Black British Writing (Palgrave), 鈥淎 Written Song: Andrea Levy鈥檚 Neo-Slave Narrative鈥 in Entertext, and 鈥淭he Choice of Opera for a Revisionist History: Joan Anim-Addo鈥檚 Imoinda as a Neo-Slave Narrative,鈥 in Transcultural Roots Uprising. With Miriam Alves, she translated and co-edited a bilingual anthology of fiction by Afro-Brazilian women, Women Righting/Mulheres Escrevendo. Lima is currently co-editing (with Joan Anim-Addo) a special issue of Callaloo on contemporary neo-slave narratives.
Lima is the director of the Comparative Literature program at 黑料传送门.
Her research interests include black British literature and culture, the Caribbean, African diaspora, post-colonial theory, women's studies, and feminist theory.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
M.A., Ph.D., University of Maryland, College Park
M.Ed., Towson State University
B.A., Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Classes
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ENGL 112: Lit: Caribbean Narratives
The course focuses on literature and other cultural productions from areas across the globe, engaging extensively with areas outside of Europe and the United States (but including marginalized cultures, ethnic groups, and nations within those regions). Guided discussion of these works will enable students to understand systems of value and meaning as embodied in one or more cultures from different regions of the world and will allow them to assess interconnections among/across local and global systems and cultures.
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HUMN 222: Black Humanities
Explores the history of Africans and people of African descent against what Patrick Manning calls the European 鈥渢ale of modernity鈥 (xv). Rather than offering a chronological history of specific regions, we will focus on the interconnections of peoples and belief systems throughout Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Interdisciplinary at the core, Black Humanities is the study of moral, social, and political alternatives and meanings embodied in cultures, epistemologies, and literatures globally. The course will explore how African diasporic ideas have not only resisted and/or re-imagined more familiar narratives of Western Civilization but oftentimes they can also be identified in them.
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WRTG 105: Wrtg: The 1619 Project
This course lays the foundation for students to participate insightfully in both written and oral academic conversations. The course focuses on three modes of written and oral communication: communication as an ongoing persuasive dialogue with multiple audiences, communication with a reflective self, and communication with a dynamic evolving text. The course also introduces elements of information literacy and critical thinking needed to develop and evaluate academic conversation. Writing Seminar is typically taken by new students in their first two semesters, often as the introduction to general education, to our library, and to academic support services as sites of collaboration rather than remediation. As many new students' only seminar-style class, Writing Seminar can help lay the foundations of not only academic but also social success.