About

I’m a first-year, assistant professor at Claflin University, an HBCU in South Carolina. My interests in decolonization stem from my family’s experiences with colonialism. My research focuses on integrating environmentalism with decolonialism, specifically in facilitating social and epistemic shifts that decolonize contemporary, Anglo colonial cultures with place-based, traditional and Indigenous cultures. I am also interested in how decolonization can be pursued in African diasporic communities. I have been an educator for fifteen years. I formerly taught history and English in secondary schools. I’ve also been involved with books to prisoners programs for fifteen years. I’m deeply committed to social and ecological justice and, in addition to teaching and writing, I love dogs, baking bread and running in the woods.

Education

Ph.D.               English, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 2020


                          Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College, 2011, 2012


M.L.A.            Humanities, University of North Carolina Asheville, 2010


B.A.                 History, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, 2006


 

Publications

Co-editor, Books Through Bars: Stories from the Prison Books Movement, University of Georgia Press, forthcoming Spring 2023


Pumzi” in Lexicon of Global Melodrama, ed. Heike Paul, Sarah Marak, Katharina Gerund, Marius Henderson. Bielefeld/ Columbia University Press, 2022.


“Human to Humus: Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Cré na Cille and Eco-linguistics as a Decolonialist Strategy,” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, vol. 9 no. 1, 2022


“The Alien Within: Divergent Futures in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon and Niell Blomkamp’s District 9,” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 47 no. 3, 398-425. DOI: 10.5621/sciefictstud.47.3.0398


 

Blog Posts

    Projects

    Saxapahaw Prison Books Program

    (Post)Magical Realism Research Group, Canadian Comparative Literature Association




     

    Upcoming Talks and Conferences

    2022                 “This Future Sucks: The MaddAddam Trilogy and the Perils of Eliding Colonial Destruction,” Modern Language Association, Washington, D.C., January 6-9


    2021                 “Fewer Trees Everyday: COVID, Wolfwalkers and Decolonizing for a Different Future,” The Claflin Literary Arts and Film Series


     

    Memberships

    Modern Language Association


    Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (US and UKI)


    American Comparative Literature Association


    North Eastern Modern Language Association


    International Association for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture


    Canadian Comparative Literature Association


    Association for Literature Environment and Culture in Canada


    European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment


     

    Moira Marquis

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    @moira

    Active 1 year, 11 months ago