About us
Academic co-ordinator - Nicole King
Current responsibility
As Academic Co-ordinator, Nicole worked with academics across the country to provide advice and support for HE English departments on topics related to teaching and learning, producing resources and organizing projects and events.
Biography
Nicole obtained her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in English at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania before beginning her career as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1994. In 2000 she moved to the University of California, San Diego where she was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Literature and where, from 2003-2005, she served as Director of Postgraduate Studies. Nicole has extensive experience lecturing at the undergraduate and postgraduate level and has developed many courses within such topics as Black U.S. Literature, Caribbean Literature, and American Literature. Nicole’s courses introduced students to literary and cultural theory and to traditions within poetry, autobiography, the novel, and the essay. She has supervised and co-supervised three successful Ph.D dissertations and served as a committee member for several others and for many MA theses. She joined the English Subject Centre in April 2006.
Nicole’s research topics include black/postcolonial diaspora identities, class and racial community, gender and migration, C.L.R. James, and Caribbean and black U.S. literature. She is the author of a monograph, C.L.R. James and Creolization: Circles of Influence (2001) as well as various articles and book chapters. Her current book project, Blackness and Its Others: Discourses of Authenticity in Black Literature, considers late twentieth-century black writing that deliberately situates itself or is otherwise situated outside the concepts and boundaries of so-called ‘normative’ blackness.
Main and Recent publications
Books
C.L.R. James and Creolization: Circles of Influence. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
Book chapters
‘Performance and Tradition in Earl Lovelace’s A Brief Conversion: The Drama of the Everyday.’ Caribbean Literature After Independence: The Case of Earl Lovelace. Bill Schwarz, Editor. (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, 2008). 111-129.
‘C.L.R. James, Genre and Cultural Politics’ chapter in (ed.) Christopher Gair, Beyond Boundaries: C.L.R. James and Postnational Studies. Pluto Press, 2006.13-38.
‘’ A colored woman in another country pleading for justice in her own’: Ida B. Wells in the United Kingdom,’ chapter in (ed.) Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Black Victorians/Black Victoriana. Rutgers University Press, 2003. 88-109.
‘Class Antagonisms in Contemporary Black U.S. Fiction,’ chapter in (eds.) Nguyen Lien and Jonathan Auerbach, Tiep Can Duong dai Van Hoa My/Contemporary Approaches to American Culture. Vietnam National University, 2001. 146-164.
Articles
‘Creolisation and On Beauty: form, character and the goddess Erzulie.’ Women: A Cultural Review Volume 20, Issue 3, 2009. Contemporary Black British Women’s Writing Special Issue. 262-276.
‘Guest Editor’s Introduction’ Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. Co-editor with Ben Knights. Fall 2007 Volume 7, Issue 3. 323-333.
‘’You think like you white’: Questioning Race and Racial Community through the Lens of Middle Class Desire(s).’ Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Spring/Summer 2002. 211-230.
Editorial Work
Guest Editor of Working With English, Volume 5, Winter 2009. 'Crossing The Divides: Multi-disciplinary Approaches to Teaching and Researching English Studies.' With Jonathan Gibson, Matthew Green and Brett Lucas.
Guest Editor of Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. Fall 2007, Voulume 7, Issue 3. With Ben Knights.
Recent conference papers and workshops
‘The Drama of the Everyday in Earl Lovelace’s A Brief Conversion.’ Caribbean Research Seminar in the North - An interdisciplinary Research Seminar on the Caribbean and its Diaspora, in association with the Society for Caribbean Studies, University of Central Lancashire, January 2008.
‘Modernism or Post-modernism? Questions of authenticity in black U.S. literature,’ London Modernism Seminar Group, Senate House, December 2007.
'Uses of the Literary': Black Power and Its Fictional Representations' Internationalising Black PowerConference - Convened by the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London and Centre for Caribbean Thought, University of the West Indies (Mona), London October 2007.
‘Stranger in the Village: Blackness, Americanness and the Literary,’ The American Studies Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, October 2007.
‘The Construction of Teaching and Learning in English: A roundtable discussion,’ Royal Holloway, University of London, English Subject Centre Conference Renewals: Refiguring University English in the 21st Century Conference, July 2007.
‘”Sonny’s Blues”: James Baldwin, Atlantic Crossings and New Writing in Britain,’
Queen Mary, University of London and Rich Mix Cultural Foundation, (James Baldwin: Work, Life, Legacies Conference) June 2007.
‘Identity/Writing/Politics: Black US Writing in Britain—A Creative Writing Workshop,’ Queen Mary, University of London and Rich Mix Cultural Foundation, (James Baldwin: Work, Life, Legacies Conference) June 2007.
‘Creolisation and Zadie Smith: Form, character and the goddess Erzulie,’ Centre for Caribbean Studies, Department of English and Comparative Literature
Goldsmith’s College, University of London—Writing, Diaspora and the Legacy of Slavery: Fifth International Conference of Caribbean Women’s Writing, April 2007.
‘Soul is soul all over the world:’ Blackness, gender and the expatriate view of Americanness,’ University of Leicester, British Association for American Studies Annual Conference, April 2007.
‘Teaching Black British and Caribbean Literature—Texts and Contexts,’ University of Manchester National Association for the Teaching of English Annual Conference, March 2007.
‘Stranger in the Village: Blackness, Americanness and the Literary,’ Nottingham University School of American Studies Speaker Series, January 2007.
‘Remembrance and Pantomime in Earl Lovelace’s A Brief Conversion,’ Institute for the Study of The Americas, School of Advanced Study, University of London: Earl Lovelace After Independence Conference, October 2006.
‘Fictions of Identity: Corporeality and ‘Race’ in Caribbean/American Literature,’ British Association for American Studies Annual Conference, University of Kent, April 2006.
‘Unstable Foundations: Reading Representations of Family, the Body and Diaspora.’ Cambridge University, Postgraduate Seminar Series in American Literature, February 2006.
‘Unstable Foundations: Reading Representations of Family, the Body and Diaspora,’ IRGG Conference: New Paradigms for the Caribbean in the Age of Globalization, Yale University, November 2005.
‘Blackness and American Exceptionalism: Reading Race through a Contemporary Prism,’ British Association for American Studies Annual Conference, Robinson College, Cambridge University, April 2005.
Professional achievements
- BA, English Literature, Princeton University, 1986
- Certificate in Afro-American Studies, Princeton University, 1986
- MA, English Literature, University of Pennsylvania, 1992
- PhD, English Literature, University of Pennsylvania, 1994
- National Mellon Fellow 1988-1993
- Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities 1996-1997
