Qiana J. Whitted

Assistant Professor

Office: 208 Humanities Office Building
(803) 777-2012
whitted@sc.edu

Education

Ph.D., Yale University, 2003

Specialization Areas

• African-American Literature and Cultural Studies
• Literature and the Philosophy of Religion
• Comics and Graphic Novels

Recent Courses

See Course Descriptions for detailed information.

• ENGL 429  Special Topics: Toni Morrison
• ENGL 843  Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and American Culture
• ENGL 429  God’s Trombones: Religion and Spirituality in African-American Literature
• ENGL 439  African-American Autobiography and Fiction of Slavery
• ENGL 439  Comics and American Culture

Current Research Project(s)

My current project is a book manuscript entitled, The Cup of Trembling: Divine Justice and the Problem of Evil in African-American Literature. Through the works of Countée Cullen, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Ernest Gaines, and Toni Morrison, my study interrogates how African-American writing wrestles with the inexplicable nature of God and the purpose of human suffering in ways that range from theoretical reflection to full-blown existential crisis. The distinctive manner in which these writers attempt to reconcile the experience of unmerited pain and racial oppression with classic concepts of God’s justice are often overlooked in popular theological debates about the elusive “problem of evil.” Yet my comprehensive analysis demonstrates that modern black literature abounds with skeptics, backsliders, and blasphemers – all seeking a meaning and purpose to the moral evils around them.

Publications

“Christianity,” Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature by and about Women of Color (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006).

 “In My Flesh Shall I See God: Ritual Violence, Racial Redemption, and Countée 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.

“Alice Walker,” New Georgia Encyclopedia. Athens: Georgia Humanities Council and the University of Georgia Press, 2003. www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-998

“Wrastl’ on Jacob: Richard Wright and the Trope of the Mourner’s Bench,” From Around the World: Secular Authors and Biblical Perspectives (forthcoming from University Press of America).

Presentations

Paper, "In My Flesh Shall I See God: Ritual Violence, Racial Redemption, and Countee Cullen's 'The Black Christ'," Society for the Study of Southern Literature, March 2004.

Paper, "A Loveless, Barren, Hopeless Western Marriage: Religious Infidelity in Alice Walker's In Love & Trouble," South Atlantic Modern Language Association, November 2003.

Paper, "The New Negro's God: Religious Skepticism and the Jim Crow South in Walter White's The Fire in the Flint," Society for the Study of Southern Literature, March 2002.

Paper, "The Worst of Sinners: Faith and Doubt in Ernest Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying," Modern Language Association Annual Conference, December 2001.

Paper, "the staples of things unquestioned: Food as Thematic Element in the Poetry of Nikki Giovanni," Reading Ethnicity Conference, Howard University, October 1997.