Asha Jeffers
Associate Professor
Email: as271872@dal.ca
Phone: 902-494-3508
Mailing Address:
- Immigrant and second-generation literature
- Gender studies
- Critical race theory
- Coming of age narratives
- Contemporary literature
- Postcolonial studies
- Cultural studies
Education:
- BAH (Guelph)
- MA (McMaster)
- PhD (York)
Remarks:
My areas of teaching and research are 20th and 21st century literature and cultural production with a particular emphasis on texts that deal with issues of gender, race, and migration. I am a trained postcolonialist, which is a core aspect of my teaching interests, and I am cross-appointed in the Gender and Womenâs Studies program. My research focuses on literature about the children of immigrants, âthe second generation,â across national and ethnic lines. I am particularly interested in how second generation literature mobilizes the conventions of coming of age narratives, the relationship between myth, memory and history, and the representation of intergenerational and intragenerational relationships to produce future-facing stories that suggest hope and possibility in trying times.
Selected Publications:
âDaughter Lessons.â Canadian Literature 254, 2024, pp. 156-159.
"In Press: Against!: Rebellious Daughters in Black Immigrant Fiction in the United States." Ohio State University Press.
"The Daughters of Immigrants: A Multidisciplinary Study." Co-editor. Lexington Press, 2023.
ââI Was Certain I Saw My Future in Himâ: Coming into Intergenerational Empathy and Escape in lĂȘ thi diem thuyâs The Gangster We Are All Looking For.â Feminist Encounters vol. 6 no. 2, article 26, 2022, pp. 1-11.
âBund Me Baby One More Time.â The Angle. Spring/Summer 2021.
âFacing the Future Through Myth in David Chariandyâs Soucouyant.â Critical Perspectives on David Chariandy. Ed. Rodolphe Solbiac. Lexington Press.Ìę
Mundane, Majestic. Anstruther Press, 2021. [poetry chapbook]
âHidden Histories and Second Generation Struggles in David Chariandyâs Soucouyant.â Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Jan. 2020, doi:.Ìę
âMyth and Migration in Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.â Critical Insights: The Immigrant Experience. Amenia: Salem Press, 2018.
âUnstable Indianness: Double Diaspora in Ramabai Espinetâs The Swinging Bridge and M.G. Vassanjiâs When She Was Queen.â South Asian Review 37.1 (June 2016): 31-50. Ìę
âMeans of Escape, Means of Invention: Hindu Figures and Black Pop Culture in Rakesh Satyalâs Blue Boy.â South Asian Review 36.3 (December 2015): 81-95.
âThe Scar.â The Puritan: Frontiers of New English Issue 30 (Summer 2015). [Short fiction]
âHow Much More Can We Take?â Small Axe Salon Vol. 4, April 2011