简介

Yogita Goyal’s research examines the literature of the African diaspora, with a particular emphasis on African American and African literature and theory. Seeking to bridge distinct intellectual traditions, she has broad interests in black nationalism, slavery, the modern novel, and race in a global frame. Her first book, Romance, Diaspora, and Black Atlantic Literature (Cambridge UP, 2010), situates Africa as constitutive of black modernity, rather than its forgotten past, tracing an ideology of form in constructions of nation and diaspora. Her current book project, “Slavery and the Transnational Reinvention of Form,” explores how slavery has become a figure for various forms of contemporary inequality, ranging from human trafficking, migrant labor abuse, conscription in war as child soldier, caste-based discrimination, and mass incarceration. Her work has been supported by a University of California President’s Research Fellowship in the Humanities (2007-2008) and an NEH Fellowship as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library (2003-2004). She currently serves as Associate Editor of the journal, Contemporary Literature and is guest-editor of the Fall 2014 special issue of Research in African Literatures on “Africa and the Black Atlantic.” She is also editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature (2016).