Department of English

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Asha Jeffers

Associate Professor

AshaJeffers
Department of English , Gender and Women's Studies

Email: as271872@dal.ca
Phone: 902-494-3508
Mailing Address: 
1186-6135 University Ave. Halifax, NS B3H 4P9
 
Research Topics:
  • Immigrant and second-generation literature
  • Gender studies
  • Critical race theory
  • Coming of age narratives
  • Contemporary literature
  • Postcolonial studies
  • Cultural studies

Education:

  • BAH (Guelph)
  • MA (McMaster)
  • PhD (York)

Remarks:
My areas of teaching and research are 20th and 21st century literature and cultural production with a particular emphasis on texts that deal with issues of gender, race, and migration. I am a trained postcolonialist, which is a core aspect of my teaching interests, and I am cross-appointed in the Gender and Women’s Studies program. My research focuses on literature about the children of immigrants, “the second generation,” across national and ethnic lines. I am particularly interested in how second generation literature mobilizes the conventions of coming of age narratives, the relationship between myth, memory and history, and the representation of intergenerational and intragenerational relationships to produce future-facing stories that suggest hope and possibility in trying times.

 

Selected Publications:

“Daughter Lessons.” Canadian Literature 254, 2024, pp. 156-159.

"In Press: Against!: Rebellious Daughters in Black Immigrant Fiction in the United States." Ohio State University Press.

"The Daughters of Immigrants: A Multidisciplinary Study." Co-editor. Lexington Press, 2023.

“‘I Was Certain I Saw My Future in Him’: Coming into Intergenerational Empathy and Escape in lê thi diem thuy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For.” Feminist Encounters vol. 6 no. 2, article 26, 2022, pp. 1-11.

“Bund Me Baby One More Time.” The Angle. Spring/Summer 2021.

“Facing the Future Through Myth in David Chariandy’s Soucouyant.” Critical Perspectives on David Chariandy. Ed. Rodolphe Solbiac. Lexington Press. 

Mundane, Majestic. Anstruther Press, 2021. [poetry chapbook]

“Hidden Histories and Second Generation Struggles in David Chariandy’s Soucouyant.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Jan. 2020, doi:10.1177/0021989419900523. 

“Myth and Migration in Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Critical Insights: The Immigrant Experience. Amenia: Salem Press, 2018.

“Unstable Indianness: Double Diaspora in Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge and M.G. Vassanji’s When She Was Queen.” South Asian Review 37.1 (June 2016): 31-50.  

“Means of Escape, Means of Invention: Hindu Figures and Black Pop Culture in Rakesh Satyal’s Blue Boy.” South Asian Review 36.3 (December 2015): 81-95.

“The Scar.” The Puritan: Frontiers of New English Issue 30 (Summer 2015). [Short fiction]

“How Much More Can We Take?” Small Axe Salon Vol. 4, April 2011