Curriculum Vitae
AMANDA RUTH WAUGH LAGJI
alagji@pitzer.edu
www.amandarwlagji.com
EMPLOYMENT
Associate Professor of English and World Literature, Pitzer College July 2023- Present
Assistant Professor of English and World Literature, Pitzer College July 2017- June 2023
Affiliate, Intercollegiate Department of Africana Studies
EDUCATION
Ph.D., English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
May 2017
M.A., English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst February 2012
B.A., English, Honors; B.A. Philosophy, Honors, Dickinson College
May 2009, summa cum laude
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time: Waiting for Now
- Winner of the 2020 Annual Book Award by the Northeast Modern Language Association for Best Unpublished Book Manuscript
- Now out with Edinburgh University Press, November 2022
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
“Forms of Futurity: The Entangled Temporalities of Eco-Terror in the Niger Delta,” in Temporalities in/of Crises in Anglophone Literatures, edited by Birgit Neumann and Sibylle Baumbach. Forthcoming 2024, Routledge.
“Colonial Clowns? The Tragicomedy of V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street.” Pacific Coast Philology, special issue edited by Stanley Orr, vol. 56, no. 2, pp.211-223. Backdated to 2021; in print May 2023.
“‘Contemporary’ Comparisons: The Silent Minaret at the Intersection of the ‘Post’ Debates.” In Post-45 vs. The World: Literary Perspectives on the Global Contemporary. Ed. William Welty. Vernon Press, 2023.
“Heavenly Homes and Transnational Travel: Amanda Smith’s Religious Cosmopolitan Vision.” In Transnational Africana Women’s Fictions, edited by Cheryl Sterling, Routledge, 2022, pp. 52-68.
“Waithood and Girlhood in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names.” Invited book chapter for Women Writing Diaspora: Transnational Perspectives in the 21st Century. Ed. Rose Sackeyfio. Lexington Books, 2021, pp. 45-58.
“Transnational Law and Literatures: A Post-Colonial Perspective.” Invited book chapter for the Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law. Ed. Peer Zumbansen. Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 1051-1068.
“Terrorist Plots: Temporality, the Politics of Preemption and the Postcolonial Novel.” Studies in the Novel 52.4 (December 2020): 403-318. Special issue edited by Gaurav Desai.
“Absurd Waiting in Samuel Beckett and Zakes Mda.” In Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces of Stasis, Delay and Deferral. Eds. Christoph Singer, Robert Wirth, and Olaf Berwald. Brill, 2019, pp. 125-139.
“Waiting in Motion: Mapping Postcolonial Fiction, New Mobilities, and Migration through Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.” Mobilities Published online before print 30 Oct. 2018. 1-16. doi: 10.1080/17450101.2018.1533684
“Marooned Time: Disruptive Waiting and Idleness in Carpentier and Coetzee.” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 19.2 (2018): 1-22.
“‘Now’ is Here: Disillusionment and Urgency in Anita Desai’s Cry, the Peacock.” 37.3 (2016): 89-110. (Backdated; in print February 2018).
“Waiting for Now: The Temporality of Return in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments.” African Literature Today 34: Diaspora & Returns in Fiction (November 2016): 28-47.
“Smoke and Mirrors: Generic Manipulation and Doubling in Dancing to ‘Almendra.’” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 13.2 (2016): 1-17.
“A Postcolonial Perspective: Law and the Literary World.” Law, Culture and the Humanities. Published online before print 11 Feb. 2016. 1-14. doi: 1743872116630698.
“Revising the Narrative of Failure: Reconsidering State Failure in Nuruddin Farah’s Knots.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 45.4 (2014): 31-57.
“‘Willing Liberates’: Nietzschean Heroism and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions.” Pacific Coast Philology 46 (2011): 80-96.
Book Reviews
Review of Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, by Leela Gandhi (2nd edition) for H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences (2019). https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=54600
Public Writing and Other Publications
“Fragments of a World That “Doesn’t End”: The Apocalyptic Impulse in a Time of Perpetual War.” Invited essay for Post 45, online forum “Contemporaries” on form and global Anglophone fiction. 2019. Link here.
“Stung by Empire: Decolonizing Higher Education in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti.” Empire Studies Magazine, online series on Children’s Literature and Empire. Link here.
“Cosmopolitan Commitments: Beyond the ‘Nation’ and the ‘Meantime’ in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup.” Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism (Winter 2011): 137-53.
In Progress
“Routing Return through Contemporary Novels of Migration,” in Companion to Migration Literature, edited by Carly McLaughlin, Gigi Adair, and Rebecca Fasselt. Under contract with Routledge
AWARDS AND HONORS
2022 Shortlist, Inaugural Routledge Area Studies Interdisciplinary Award
2020 NeMLA Annual Book Award for the unpublished manuscript, Waiting for Now: Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time
2017 Graduate Student Caucus Essay Award, Northeast Modern Language Association
2016 Honorable Mention, Ford Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship
2016 Special Mention, Postcolonial Studies Association Postgraduate Essay Prize
2013 Special Mention, Postcolonial Studies Association Postgraduate Essay Prize
2012 Charles A. Peters Prize, Renaissance Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
2011 Special Mention, Postcolonial Studies Association Postgraduate Essay Prize
2011 John Hicks Prize in Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2016 Modern Language Association Travel Grant for MLA Paper Presentations
2016 Northeast Modern Language Association Graduate Student Travel Award
2015 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Dissertation Summer Fellowship
2015 English Department Travel Grant for MLA Conference Paper Presentation
2014 English Department Travel Grant for MLA Conference Paper Presentation
2013 Northeast Modern Language Association Graduate Student Travel Award
2012 English Department Travel Grant for NeMLA Paper Presentation
2010 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Graduate School Travel Grant
2010 English Department Travel Grant for PAMLA Paper Presentation
CONFERENCE PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS
“Policing Counter-Insurgency in The Secret Agent.” Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, San Francisco, CA, January 2023.
“The Labor of Love: Women’s ‘Work’ in Aminatta Forna’s Fiction.” Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, San Francisco, CA, January 2023.
“The ‘Fantastic’ Form of Masande Ntshanga’s Triangulum.” Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association (PAMLA) annual conference, Los Angeles, CA, November 2022.
“The Terrorist as Type: Exploiting the Implied Reader’s Expectations.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Baltimore, MD, March 2022.
“[W]e can no longer be sure of the future’: Anticipating the Unfolding Oil Crisis in Okpewho’s Tides.” Temporalities of Crisis Workshop, organized by Birgit Neumann and Sibylle Baumbach. Held virtually, organized in Germany, December 2021.
“Decolonizing “Development” in Caryl Phillips’s A State of Independence.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Boston, Massachusetts. March 2020.
“Beyond Binaries: Delving into Deltas and Hungry Tides.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Boston, Massachusetts. March 2020.
“Stung by Empire: Decolonizing Higher Education in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti.” British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, Savannah, Georgia. February 2020.
“Reading the Writing On/Behind the Wall: Palestine and State Terror.” The Modern Language Association annual conference, Seattle, Washington, January 2020.
“Colonial Clowns? The Tragicomedy of V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street.” Pacific and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) annual conference, San Diego, California. November 2019.
“Camps and Postcolonies: Waiting in/for the Aftermath.” The Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies conference, Auckland, New Zealand, July 2019.
“Timing Terror: Stopped Watches Across the Twentieth Century and Beyond.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Washington, D.C., March 2019.
“Teaching Terror in the Postcolonial Classroom.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) annual conference, Washington, D.C., March 2019.
“Registering Insecurities in the Global War of/on Terror.” British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, Savannah, Georgia, February 2019.
“The Enduring Spectacle of the Aftermath: Embodying the Blast in The Association of Small Bombs.” South Asian Literary Association (SALA) annual conference, Chicago, IL, January 2019.
“Letters to the Future: Petroleum, Protest, and Persistence.” Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, Chicago, IL, January 2019.
“Producing the Pipeline: Making the Most of Graduate-School Years.” Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, Chicago, IL, January 2019.
“Terrorist Plots: Terrorism, Temporality, and the Politics of Preemption.” Marquis Salon Talk, Pitzer College, October 2018.
“Colonial Time Regimes in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure.” The Social Life of Time, International and Interdisciplinary Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland, June 2018.
“The Postcolonial Petroscape of Isidore Okpewho’s Tides.” African Literature Association (ALA) Annual Conference, Washington D.C., May 2018.
“Waiting on the Move in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2018.
“Don’t Wait: Reflections from a Recent Hire.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2018.
“Waithood and Girlhood in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names.” Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference, New York, NY, January 2018.
“The ‘Fundamentals’ of World Literature: The Silent Minaret and Post-9/11 Global Forms.” African Literature Association (ALA) Annual Conference, New Haven, CT, June 2017.
“Finding a Form for the Fragments: Bilal Tanweer’s The Scatter Here is Too Great,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, March 2017.
“Time and the Other: Negotiating Temporalities in African Fiction,” African Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., December 2016.
“Waiting and Creating: Presenting African Futures in The Cry of Winnie Mandela and Radiance of Tomorrow,” Waiting as Cultural Practice: An Interdisciplinary, International Conference, Paderborn, Germany, May 2016.
“The Trauma of Waiting: Gendered Time in Anita Desai’s Cry the Peacock,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Hartford, CT, March 2016.
“Time to Revisit: Nadine Gordimer and Times of Transition,” Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Austin, TX, January 2016.
“Waiting: Keywords for the Global South,” Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Austin, TX, January 2016.
“Marking Time in Postcolonial Studies: Tracking Colonial Time and Temporality in Postcolonial Fiction,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, April 2015.
“Law and Literature: A Postcolonial Perspective,” Desire for Narrative in Law and Literature, Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, Canada, January 2015.
“Postcolonial Temporalities and the Violence of History,” African Studies Association Annual Conference, Indianapolis, IN, November 2014.
“Waiting for Now: Theorizing Postcoloniality’s Temporalities,” International Conference on Narrative, Boston, MA, March 2014.
“Assessing the State of Things: Failure and Nuruddin Farah’s Fiction,” Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, January 2014.
“Reconciliation Revised: Narrative Closure, Truth, and Trauma in Nuruddin Farah’s Maps,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Boston, MA, March 2013.
“Revising the Narrative of Failure: Reconsidering State Failure in Nuruddin Farah’s Knots,” British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Association Conference, Savannah, GA, February 2013.
“Circulating Colonial Contagions: Labor, Sickness, and Scars in Charlotte Yonge’s The Clever Woman of the Family,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference, Rochester, NY, March 2012.
“‘Willing Liberates’: Nietzschean Heroism in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions,” Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Conference, Honolulu, HI, November 2010.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Assistant Professor, English and World Literature Department, Pitzer College.
Growing Up Postcolonial (Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2023)
Unruly Women of World Lit (Fall 2018, Fall 2022, First Year Seminar)
Terror and the Text (Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2021, Spring 2023)
Intro to World Lit: Texts on the Move (Spring 2018, Fall 2019)
Rivers, Oceans, Tides, and Seas: World Literature in an Oceanic Context (Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022)
Decolonial Futures (formerly Postcolonial Studies for the 21st Century) (Fall 2017, 2019, 2020, 2023)
Post-Apartheid Novels (Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2023)
Literary Theory (Fall 2021, 2022, and 2023)
Instructor of record, English Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Later British Literature: Colonial Engagements. (Online)
World Literature: Colony, Diaspora, Nation: Images of Africa in World Literature and the Atlantic World
Society and Literature: “May it Please the Court?”: Scenes of Justice and Fairness in Literature
Gender, Society, Literature, and Culture: Through a Child’s Eyes: Postcolonial Literature and Constructions of Gender (Online)
College Writing (12 sections, 2009-2017)
Teaching Assistant, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Modern Fiction, English Department (2 sections)
Introduction to Legal Studies, Political Science Department (9 sections)
Instructor of record, Westfield State University.
World Literature II: Home and Away: Literatures of the World, Worlds of Literature
World Literature II: Colony, Diaspora, Nation: Images of Africa in World Literature and the Atlantic World
SERVICE
Select Professional Service
Reviewer: Time & Society, Studies in the Novel, Contemporary Women’s Writing, Contemporary South Asia, South Asian Review, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: An International Review of English Studies, Journal of Urban and Cultural Studies, Routledge (The Companion to Migration Literature), Mobilities
2022 Mentor at NeMLA job clinic; assigned 3 graduate student mentees to advise on CV development
2019- Reviewer and Editorial Board member, Time & Society
2019 Panel organizer, “Global Capitals,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., March 21-24, 2019.
2019 Panel organizer, “Aesthetics of Terrorism,” Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Chicago, January 3-5, 2019.
2018 Roundtable organizer and chair, “Teaching Terrorism,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, April 12-15, 2018.
2017 Panel organizer and chair, “Post-Post-Colonial? Time in Contemporary Postcolonial Fiction,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, March 23-26, 2017.
2016 Panel organizer and chair, “Orientalism and the Globalization of Africa: New Directions with Africa at the Center,” African Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington D.C., December 1-3.
RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS
Postcolonial literature and theory
Narrative and time
Global Anglophone, twentieth-century literature
African literature
Law and literature
Terrorism and literature
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EXPERIENCE
Editorial Review Board
Time & Society, 2019-Present
Diesis: Footnotes on Literary Identities, 2012- 2014.
Member, Teaching and Learning Communities of the Claremont College.
First 5, organized by the Center for Teaching and Learning, 2017-2019.
Learner Centered Teaching, organized by the Center for Teaching and Learning, Fall 2018.
Great Books Summer Programs, Amherst College and Stanford University campuses, online 2020 and 2022
Academic Director, Senior program (2018, 2022) and Intermediate program (2019, 2020)
Assistant, Interdisciplinary Studies Institute
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2012- May 2015.
Writing Tutor, University of Massachusetts Writing Center
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2010-2012.
PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association (PAMLA)
Phi Beta Kappa