The University of St. Thomas

College of Arts & Sciences | Department of English

Carmela Garritano

Carmela Garritano

Carmela Garritano

Associate Professor of English

cjgarritano@stthomas.edu
Phone: (651) 962-5607

Office Location: JRC 357
Office Hours: N/A--Dr. Garritano is on sabbatical in 2011-2012

Courses taught in Fall 2012
ENGL 121-32
41759		 Critical Thinking: Lit/Writing 0955-1135 T R TBD

4 Credit Hours

Students will read and write about literary texts critically and closely. The course emphasizes recursive reading and writing processes that encourage students to discover, explain, question and clarify ideas. To this end, students will study a variety of genres as well as terms and concepts helpful to close analysis of those genres. They will practice various forms of writing for specific audiences and purposes. Students will reflect on and develop critical awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers.
ENGL 121-37
41764		 Critical Thinking: Lit/Writing 1330-1510 T R TBD

4 Credit Hours

Students will read and write about literary texts critically and closely. The course emphasizes recursive reading and writing processes that encourage students to discover, explain, question and clarify ideas. To this end, students will study a variety of genres as well as terms and concepts helpful to close analysis of those genres. They will practice various forms of writing for specific audiences and purposes. Students will reflect on and develop critical awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers.
GENG 558-01
42479		 Anglophone World Literature 1800-2100 R TBD

3 Credit Hours

This course focuses on postcolonial writers, as well as writers from American communities of color. The course emphasis may be on the literature of one nation or ethnic community, on one geographic area, or on a group of authors who deal with a similar topic. Authors will vary, and may include Chinua Achebe, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Bessie Head, Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, or Derek Walcott. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases. This course satisfies the Multicultural Literature distribution requirement.

Academic History

M.A., Ph.D., Michigan State University
B.A., University of Notre Dame
At St. Thomas since 2002

Expertise/Specialties

African Literatures and Cinema
Postcolonial Literature and Theory
Global Cultural Studies
Third World Cinema

Awards & Honors

2009 Postdoctoral Summer Fellowship, West Africa Research Association

2007 Maxi Grant, University of St. Thomas

2004 Sudden Opportunity Grant, University of St. Thomas

2001 Varg-Sullivan Award
Awarded to an outstanding graduate student in the College of Arts and Letters, MSU

Fulbright Research Award
Awarded for dissertation research in Ghana, Oct 1999- Sept 2000

1999 College of Arts and Letters Merit Fellowship, MSU
Awarded for dissertation research, Fall 1999 and Spring 2000

1997-1999 Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship
Awarded for the study of Yoruba

1998 Global Young Scholar Award, MSU
Awarded for pre-dissertation research in Ghana, Summer 1998

Current Project

I'm in the early stages of a project that will examine recent African cultural production (literary and popular works published or released between the mid-1980's, after the imposition of structural adjustments programs, and the present) in the context of globalization. I am keen to investigate how African cultural products challenge, are complicit with, or otherwise engage the materialities and "governmentalities" of neoliberalism and late capitalism.

Selected Publications

African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, forthcoming.

"West African Video-Movies and their Transnational Imaginaries." A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism. Eds. Ato Quayson & Girish Daswani. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Forthcoming.

“Contesting Authenticities: African Film Critics and the History of Early Video Production in Ghana.” Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies. 20.1(2008): 21-48.

"Amma Darko's The Housemaid and the Gendering of Novel and Nation." Critical Perspectives on Amma Darko. Ed. Vincent O. Odamtten.  Cape Town: Adelphi, 2007.

"Troubled Men and the Women who Create Havoc: Four Recent Films by West African Filmmakers." Research in African Literatures 34.3 (2003): 159-66.
 
"Restaging the Past: The Rewriting of the Tale of the Beautiful Daughter by Abrahams, Tutuola, Ogali, and Aidoo." African Images: Recent Studies and Text in Cinema. The Annual Selected Papers of the African Literature Association. Eds. Maureen N. Eke, Kenneth W. Harrow, and Emmanuel Yewah. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000.

"A Feminist Reading of Ellen Kuzwayo's Call Me Woman."  The Postcolonial Condition of African Literature. The Annual Selected Papers of the African Literature Association. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000.

"Women, Melodrama, and Political Critique: A Feminist Reading of Hostages, Dust to Dust, and True Confessions." Nigerian Video Films.  Ed. Jonathon Haynes.  U of Ohio Press, 1999.

"At an Intersection of Humanism and Postmodernism: A Feminist Reading of Ellen Kuzwayo's Call Me Woman."  Research in African Literatures 28.2 (1997): 57-65.

Selected Presentations

"New Forms of Transnational Practice in Ghana." Paper presented at the African Literature Association Annual Conference. Athens, Ohio, April 13-17, 2011.

"Global Aspirations and Transnational Imaginaries: The 'Professional' Video-movie from Ghana." Invited address given at the Reading and Producing Nollywood: An International Symposium. Lagos, Nigeria. The University of Lagos, March 23-26, 2011.

"Professional Movies and their Global Aspirations: The Second Wave of Video Production in Ghana, 1992-2000." Paper presented at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting. San Francisco, CA, November 18-21, 2010.

"Sakawa Movies from Ghana: Internet, Enchantment and Technological Spectacle." Paper presented at the African Literature Association Annual Conference. University of Arizona, March 10-14, 2010.

"Parallel Modernities and Underground Transnationalisms." Paper presented at the Revisiting Modernization conference, University of Ghana, 28 July 2009.

"Cosmopolitan Spectacle and Narratives of National Belonging in Three Transnational West African Videos." Paper presented at the African Literature Association Annual Conference, Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL, April 22-27, 2008.

"A New Critical Architecture for African Grassroots Cinemas: Nigerian Video in Ghana, Pirate Economies and Transnational Media Flows."  Paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Philadelphia, PA March 6-9, 2007

"Ghanaian Video Goes Global: An Itinerant Cinema of Travel." Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago, 2007.

Video Production

The Video Revolution in Ghana (2000)
see clips from the documentary here: http://www.youtube.com/user/cgarritano