M.Esi Bani, Ph.D., Associate Professor

Education: Comparative Literature, University of Texas-Austin

Research Interests: Literature of African and African Diaspora: Ritual Theatre and Performance in Traditional and Modern Africa; Women in Africa; West African Popular Culture

Welcome! To have the privilege of hearing richly woven stories, narrated in voices with finely tuned timbres and cadences, can do nothing but spur on a love of narrative. Why do people no matter the condition they live in, seek to give others the gift of themselves, a piece of themselves through stories? Telling stories is like breathing, it is essential for living.

As a student and teacher, my journeys through the worlds of African and African Diaspora literatures have rewarded me over and over with an exhilarating diet of stories – be they funny, sad, frightening, mind-numbing, or thought-altering.

I studied at the Universities of Ghana at Legon, Kent at Canterbury, and completed a Ph.D degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin in 1996. Here at the University of Louisville, I teach courses in African, African-American, and Caribbean literatures, black women’s writing, as well as African Popular Culture.

My research in recent years has focused on exploring the construction and representation of dress, gender, and the body in African literature and film. Recent publications include “Ailing Bodies: Disease and the Body in West African Video Films,” “Unraveled Yarns: Dress, Consumption, and Women’s Bodies in Ghanaian Culture,” “Warped Identities: Dress in Ghanaian Video Film,” “African Hair Sculpture,” “Elusive Modernity: Portraits of the City in Ghanaian Video Film,”

Contact Information:

437 Strickler Hall (4^th floor, East Wing)

Department of Pan-African Studies

(502) 852-5505

Fall 2012 Office Hours

Tuesday 12:30-2:00 pm

Also available by appointment

Email

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