Akua Banful

Akua on campus

Assistant Professor

274 Voorhies Hall
Office Hours
Tuesdays 12:10 - 1:10pm; Thursdays 9:10 - 10:10 am
Currently Teaching:

ENL 139: “Back” to Africa

ENL 126: Social Appetites

Biography: 
 

My research centers on questions of climate, culture, and empire. I am at work on a book project titled Rewriting the Tropics: Literature, Climate and the Afterlives of Empire that examines the cultural and ideological dimensions of climate in African, Latin American, and Caribbean literature focused on empire and its aftermath. My writing has appeared in PMLA, The Senses and Society, The Journal of Literature of Medicine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and BOMB Magazine.

Prior to my appointment at UC Davis, I was the Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality from 2020-22. I also served as a Humanities New York Public Humanities Fellow from 2019-2020. 

Education and Degree(s)
  • Ph.D. Columbia University, 2022
  • A.B. Princeton University, 2015
Research Interests & Expertise
  • Comparative literature( primarily: African, Caribbean, Latin American in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish), Environmental Humanities, Food Studies, Postcolonial criticism and theory, Contemporary Art, Black Diasporic cultural production
  • Political theory and philosophy, Blue Humanities, Alternate Cosmologies