Research Fields
Jean Wyatt鈥檚 main research field is contemporary women writers of color, with a special focus on African American and Black British women writers.
Jean Wyatt's scholarship, 2017-2023
Jean Wyatt鈥檚 latest book is Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison鈥檚 Later Novels (U of Georgia Press, 2017). This book was awarded the Toni Morrison Society Book Prize in 2018. Her current project is an edited essay collection, with co-editor Sheldon George, called Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women Writers: Race and Narrative Innovation. This collection of essays covers contemporary black women writers in Africa, the Caribbean, the United States, and the U K. The book manuscript is in press (Bloomsbury Press, U K, forthcoming 2024.) In 2020, Jean Wyatt and Sheldon George co- edited a collection of essays, Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers: Race, Ethics, Narrative Form (Routledge, 2020). Recent essays include 鈥淔reud, Laplanche, Leonardo: Sustaining Enigma鈥 in American Imago 77.2, (2019); and 鈥淒islocating the Reader: Slave Motherhood and the Disrupted Temporality of Trauma in Toni Morrison鈥檚 Beloved,鈥 in The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Jean Wyatt has recently written three essays on Helen Oyeyemi. 鈥淩einventing the Gothic in Oyeyemi鈥檚 White Is for Witching: Maternal Ethics and Racial Politics鈥 in Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers (Routledge, 2020); 鈥淢irror Mirror: The Visual Economy of Race in Helen Oyeyemi鈥檚 Boy, Snow, Bird (Angelaki 17.6 (November 2022), 83-97; and 鈥淒oublings and Dissociation in Nella Larsen鈥檚 Passing and Helen Oyeyemi鈥檚 Boy, Snow, Bird (27.3-4, July 2022). Jean is professor emerita of English at 色界吧.
Jean Wyatt鈥檚 books include Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison鈥檚 Later Novels (2017), Risking Difference: Identification, Race and Community in Contemporary Fiction and Feminism (2004), and Reconstructing Desire: The Role of the Unconscious in Women鈥檚 Reading and Writing (1990). She has been honored with the 色界吧 Sterling Award for Scholarship and Teaching (2003). And she was awarded the Toni Morrison Book Prize for the Best Single-Authored book on Toni Morrison (2018). She has been appointed a distinguished visiting scholar at the Summer Institute, University of Kansas (2007) and a visiting academic in the English Faculty, Oxford University, U K (2018).
Website
Selected Publications
Books
Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels. University of Georgia Press, 2017.
Risking Difference: Identification, Race and Community in Contemporary Fiction and Feminism. SUNY Press 2004.
Reconstructing Desire: The Role of the Unconscious in Womens鈥 Reading and Writing. University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
Articles
鈥淢irror Mirror: The Visual Economy of Race in Helen Oyeyemi鈥檚 Boy, Snow, Bird.鈥 Angelaki 27.6, 2022
鈥淒islocating the Reader: Slave Motherhood and the Disrupted Temporality of Trauma in Toni Morrison鈥檚 Beloved.鈥 In The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis. Edited Vera J. Camden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
鈥淒oublings and Dissociation in Nella Larsen鈥檚 Passing and Helen Oyeyemi鈥檚 Boy, Snow, Bird. Angelaki 27.3-4 Special Issue on 鈥淎fter Modernism: Women, Gender, Race鈥 (July 2022). Reprinted in After Modernism: Women, Gender Race. (Routledge 2023).
鈥淩einventing the Gothic in Helen Oyeyemi鈥檚 White is for Witching: Maternal Ethics and Racial Politics.鈥 In Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers: Race, Ethics, Narrative Form. Edited Jean Wyatt and Sheldon George (Routledge, 2020).
鈥淔reud, Laplanche, Leonardo: Sustaining Enigma.鈥 American Imago 77.2 (2019).
鈥淟ove in the Novels of Toni Morrison.鈥 Angelaki 22/1. Special Issue, 鈥淲omen Writing Across Cultures: present, past, future.鈥 Edited Pelagia Goulimari. Reprinted in Women Writing Across Cultures, edited Pelagia Goulimari. (Routledge, 2018).
"The Economic Grotesque and the Critique of Capitalism in Toni Morrison's Tar Baby. MELUS 39.1 (Spring 2014).
鈥淔ailed Messages, Maternal Loss and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison鈥檚 A Mercy.鈥 Modern Fiction Studies 58.1 (Spring 2012).
鈥淪torytelling, Melancholia, and Narrative Structure in Louise Erdrich鈥檚 The Painted Drum.鈥 MELUS 36.1 (Spring 2011).
鈥淟ove鈥檚 Time and the Reader: Ethical Effects of Nachtraglichkeit in Toni Morrison鈥檚 Love.鈥 Narrative 16.2 (May 2008).
鈥淧atricia Hill Collins鈥檚 Black Sexual Politics and the Genealogy of the Strong Black Woman.鈥 Studies in Gender and Sexuality 9.1 (Winter 2008).
鈥淭he Impossible Project of Love in Sartre鈥檚 Being and Nothingness, Dirty Hands, and 鈥淭he Room.鈥 Sartre Studies International 12.2 (November 2006).
鈥淭hinking the Other-Centered Self with Jean Laplanche: The Enigmatic Signifier and its Political Uses.鈥 Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society 11.2 (August 2006).
鈥淪ignifying Contortions: Disavowal, The Enigmatic Signifier, and George W. Bush鈥檚 Credibility After 9/11.鈥 : Special Issue on 鈥9/11, the Iraq War, and the Prospects for Peace.鈥 International Journal of Applied Psychoanalysis 3.2 (June 2006).
鈥淛ouissance and Desire in Michael Haneke鈥檚 The Piano Teacher.鈥 American Imago 62.4 (Winter 2005).
"Toward Cross-Race Dialogue: Identification, Misrecognition and Difference in Multicultural Feminist Community.鈥 Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29.3 (Spring 2004).
Invited papers presented on鈥 request.