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Professor of African American Studies & English at the College of Charleston will discuss the value of folklore in society. Who are the folk and what exactly is lore? Focusing specifically on the origins and context of West African cultural practices that evolved into African American folklore, she will share the meaning and beauty behind many folk practices and beliefs held by various populations of people of African descent.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Kameelah L. Martin was raised in a military family and has lived all over the United States. She entered Georgia Southern University as a first generation college student and earned her BA in English and went on to earn a Master’s degree in Afro-American Studies from the University of California Los Angeles. Dr. Martin earned her PhD in English from Florida State University in 2006. Her area of focus is twentieth century African American literature with an emphasis in folklore and, more specifically, the African American conjuring tradition. Her dissertation earned the FSU Department of English J. Russell Reaver Award for Outstanding Dissertation in American Literature or Folklore. Dr. Martin’s research explores the lore cycle of the conjure woman, or black priestess, as an archetype in literature and visual texts. In 2013, Palgrave McMillan published her first monograph Conjuring Moments in African American Literature: Women, Spirit Work, & Other Such Hoodoo which engages how African American authors have shifted, recycled, and reinvented the conjure woman figure primarily in twentieth century fiction. Dr. Martin is also the author of Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics: African Spirituality in American Cinema (Lexington 2016) which explores the treatment of the priestess figure in American cinema.