Abdul R. JanMohamed, Professor

Office: 236 Wheeler

Phone: 510-642-4967

Areas of Interest

African American Literature. Postcolonial & World Literature. Critical Theory.

Current Research

Professor JanMohamed works on postcolonial fiction and theory; African American fiction; minority discourse; and critical theory. He is currently completing a book on Richard Wright, which examines the psycho-political effects and the ideological functions of the threat of lynching as a mode of coercion.

Selected Publications and Papers Delivered

The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright’s Archaeology of Death. Duke University Press, forthcoming, March 2005.

The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse, ed., with David Lloyd, Oxford University Press, Fall 1990.

Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa, The University of Massachusetts Press, 1983; 2nd edition, 1988.

Richard Wright as a Specular Border Intellectual: The Politics of Identification in Black Power in Beyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities, Cultures, and the Challenge of Globalization ed. Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi. NY: SUNY press, forthcoming.

Theory, Practice and the Intellectual: A Conversation with Abdul R. JanMohamed, interview by Sean Goudie, Jouvert (an on-line journal of postcolonial studies), vol. 1, No. 2. (http://152.1.96.5/jouvert/).

Refiguring Value/Power/Knowledge, or Foucault's Disavowal of Marx, Whither Marxism, eds., Bernd Magnus & Steve Cullenburg. London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 31-64.

Some Implications of Paulo Freire's Border Pedagogy, Cultural Studies, vol. 7, no. 1 (January 1993), pp. 107-117.

Worldliness-without-World, Homelessness-as-Home: Toward a Definition of the Specular Border Intellectual, in Edward Said: A Critical Reader, ed., Michael Sprinker. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1992, pp. 96-120.

Out of Africa: The Generation of Mythic Consciousness in Isak Dinesen: Critical Views, ed. Olga A. Pelensky. Athens, Ohio: Ohio UP, 1993, pp. 138-56. (Extract from Manichean Aesthetics)

Sexuality on/of the Racial Border: Foucault, Wright, and the Articulation of 'Racialized Sexuality,' in Discourses of Sexuality: From Aristotle to Aids, ed. Domna Stanton, Ann Arbor, Univ. of Michigan Press, 1992, pp. 94-116.

Dennis Brutus, Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twentieth Century Caribbean and Black African Writers, vol. 117. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1992, pp.98-106.

The Economy of Moral Capital in the Gulf War, introduction (co-authored with Donna Przybylowicz) to special issue of Cultural Critique on The Economies of War, No. 19 (Fall, 1991), pp. 5-14.

The Degeneration of the Great South African Lie: Occasion For Loving, in Critical Essay on Nadine Gordmier, ed. Rowland Smith. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990, pp. 90-96. (Extract from Manichean Aesthetics)

Negating the Negation as a Form of Affirmation in Minority Discourse: The Construction of Richard Wright as Subject, Cultural Critique, no. 7, Fall 1988 pp. 245-66.

Minority Discourse--What Is To Be Done? introduction to Cultural Critique issue on The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse II, no. 7, Fall 1988, pp. 5-17; co-authored with David Lloyd.

Dominance, Hegemony, and the Task of Criticism, The Griot, vol. 6, no. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 7-11.

Toward a Theory of Minority Discourse, introduction to Cultural Critique issue on The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse, no. 6, Spring 1987, pp. 5-12; co-authored with David Lloyd.

Rehistoricizing Wright: The Psycho-Political Function of Death in Uncle Tom's Children, in Modern Critical Views: Richard Wright, ed., Harold Bloom. New Haven, CT: Chelsea House, 1987, pp. 191-228.

The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature, Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 1 (Autumn 1985), pp. 59-87.

Sophisticated Primitivism: The Syncretism of Oral and Literate Modes in Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Ariel, vol. 15, no. 4 (Oct. 1984), pp. 19-39.

Office Hours

Mon & Wed 9:30 - 11:00