Assistant Professor of English and World Literature
With Pitzer Since: 2017
Field Group: English and World Literature
Campus Address: Broad Center 215
Phone: 909.607.0844
Email: Amanda_Lagji@pitzer.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2:00 pm – 4:00pm; Wednesdays, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Educational Background
PhD University of Massachusetts, Amherst BA, Dickinson College
Research Interests
Global Anglophone literatures, postcolonial literature and theory, time and narrative, African literature, law and literature
Recent Courses
Postcolonial Literature for the 21st Century
World Literature in an Oceanic Context
Selected Publications
“Waiting for Now: The Temporality of Return in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments.” African Literature Today 34: Diaspora & Returns in Fiction (November 2016): 28-47.
“Smoke and Mirrors: Generic Manipulation and Doubling in Dancing to ‘Almendra.’” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 13.2 (2016): 1-17.
“A Postcolonial Perspective: Law and the Literary World.” Law, Culture and the Humanities. Published online before print 11 Feb. 2016. 1-14. doi: 1743872116630698.
“Revising the Narrative of Failure: Reconsidering State Failure in Nuruddin Farah’s Knots.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 45.4 (2014): 31-57.
“‘Willing Liberates’: Nietzschean Heroism and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions.” Pacific Coast Philology 46 (2011): 80-96.
Selected Conference Presentations
“Waithood and Girlhood in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names.” Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference, New York, NY, January 2018.
“The ‘Fundamentals’ of World Literature: The Silent Minaret and Post-9/11 Global Forms.” African Literature Association (ALA) Annual Conference, New Haven, CT, June 2017.
“Finding a Form for the Fragments: Bilal Tanweer’s The Scatter Here is Too Great,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, March 2017.
“Time and the Other: Negotiating Temporalities in African Fiction,” African Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., December 2016.
“Waiting and Creating: Presenting African Futures in The Cry of Winnie Mandela and Radiance of Tomorrow,” Waiting as Cultural Practice: An Interdisciplinary, International Conference, Paderborn, Germany, May 2016.
“The Trauma of Waiting: Gendered Time in Anita Desai’s Cry the Peacock,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Hartford, CT, March 2016.
“Time to Revisit: Nadine Gordimer and Times of Transition,” Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Austin, TX, January 2016.
“Waiting: Keywords for the Global South,” Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Austin, TX, January 2016.
“Marking Time in Postcolonial Studies: Tracking Colonial Time and Temporality in Postcolonial Fiction,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, April 2015.
“Law and Literature: A Postcolonial Perspective,” Desire for Narrative in Law and Literature, Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, Canada, January 2015.
