Faith Lois Smith
Departments/Programs
African and African American StudiesEnglish
Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies
Degrees
Duke University, Ph.D.University of Wisconsin, M.A.
University of the West Indies, B.A.
Expertise
Professor Smith teaches courses in the literary and visual histories of the Caribbean and the African Diaspora, with a focus on how narrative, photography and other genres allow us to sense the impact of imperial and postcolonial power on notions of selfhood and sovereignty.Profile
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Faith Smith is an Associate Professor in the departments of African and African American Studies, and English and American Literature, and the Latin American and Latino Studies, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and CAST Programs. Her research interests are in the intellectual and cultural histories of the Caribbean and the African Diaspora, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Her essays on intellectual life, gender, sexuality and sovereignty include recent articles such as "Fabricating Intimacies: Artificial Silk and Cloth Wives in the Interwar Moment" (Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 12: 2018) and "Good Enough for Booker T to Kiss: Hampton, Tuskegee, and Caribbean Self-Fashioning" (Journal of Transnational American Studies 5, 1: 2013); the edited collection Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean (2011); and a forthcoming book entitled "Strolling Through the Ruins: The Caribbean's Non-Sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century."
Courses Taught
| AAAS | 5a | Introduction to African and African American Studies |
| AAAS | 124a | After the Dance: Performing Sovereignty in the Caribbean |
| AAAS | 125b | Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work |
| AAAS | 133b | The Literature of the Caribbean |
| AAAS | 134b | Novel and Film of the African Diaspora |
| AAAS/ENG | 80a | Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography |
| ENG | 72a | The Caribbean's Asias: Asian Migration & Heritage in the Caribbean |
| ENG | 107a | Women Writing Desire: Caribbean Fiction and Film |
| ENG | 127b | Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts |
| ENG | 168b | Plotting Inheritance |
| ENG | 237a | Reading the Black Transnation |
Awards and Honors
Norman Fund for book subvention, $3,500 (2021)
Mandel Humanities Center Faculty Grant in the Humanities for “Silk Roads and Highways: Imagining ‘China’ in the Caribbean Today” (2019)
Norman Award for Spanish tuition at the Instituto Cultural Oaxaca, Summer 2019 (2019)
Norman Award (2013)
Senior Faculty Research Leave for Spring 2014 (2013 - 2014)
Academic Year 2008-09 Fellow in Residence, W.E.B. DuBois Institute, Harvard University (2008 - 2009)
Fellow, National Endowment of the Humanities (2005)
Dean's Office grant for developing AAAS interdisciplinary course (2004)
National Humanities Center Fellowship (2002 - 2003)
Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellow of the Huntington Library (San Marino, California) (1998)
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University (1997 - 1998)
Scholarship
Smith, Faith Lois. "“John Jacob Thomas and the Grammar of Freedom”." Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800-1920. Ed. Evelyn O’Callaghan and Tim Watson. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ Press, 2021. 137-150.
Smith, Faith Lois, Reena N. Goldthree and Natanya Duncan, ed. “Fabricating Intimacies: Artificial Silk and Cloth Wives in the Interwar Moment.”. 2018.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“And For You I Played A Sorrow Song: Looking At Frances Johnston’s Sorrow Songs With Carrie Mae Weems.”." Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement. Ed. Robin Lydenberg and Ash Anderson. Boston: McMullen Museum, Boston College, 2018
Smith, Faith Lois. "“The Soundings with my Sisters: Sovereignty, Intimacy, Disappointment.”." Small Axe 54. (2018): 124-137..
Smith, Faith Lois. "“‘A Mysterious Murder’: Considering Jamaican Victorianism.”." Victorian Jamaica. Ed. Tim Barringer and Wayne Modest. Durham: Duke UP, 2018. 658-673.
Smith, Faith Lois. ""Queer Livity in the Caribbean: Rosamond S. King's Island Bodies.”." Rev. of Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination., by Rosamond S. King. Small Axe vol. 52 March 2017: 233-240.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Kingston Calling: Mais’s Paris, 1954.”." Beyond Windrush: Rethinking Postwar Anglophone Caribbean Literature.. Ed. . J. Dillon Brown and Leah R. Rosenberg. Oxford: University of Mississippi Press., 2015. 361-391.
Smith, Faith Lois. ""Good Enough for Booker T to Kiss: Hampton, Tuskegee, and Caribbean Self-Fashioning.”." Journal of Transnational American Studies 5. 1. 2013 (2014): <http://www.escholarship.org/uc/acgcc_jtas>.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Intellectual Formations.”." Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 10, 2. (2014): <http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/anthurium/vol10/iss2/6>.
Jalani Niah and Erin McCleod, ed. "Brother Man’s Asceticism.”. Kingston: University of the West Indies, 59, 2 2013.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Between Stephen Lloyd and Estaban Yo-eed: Locating Jamaica Through Cuba.”." Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 20. 1 (2012) (2013): 22-38.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Caribbean Writers and the Public Sphere.”." Rev. of Caribbean Literature and the Public Sphere: From the Plantation to the Postcolonial, by Raphael Dalleo. S/X Salon 28 May, 2012: http://smallaxe.net/wordpress3/reviews/2012/05/28/caribbean-writers-and-the-public-sphere/.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Literary Periodization: Reading the Nineteenth Century,”." Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature. 2012 ed. Ed. Supriya Nair. New York:, 2013. 233-254.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Rupert Gray’s Vulnerability… And Ours.”." Small Axe 40. March 2013 (2013): 71-83.
Smith, Faith Lois. ""Has the Plantation Become a Cliché?"." Rev. of Globalization and the Post-Creole Imagination: Notes on Fleeing the Plantation, by Michaeline Crichlow, with Patricia Northover.. Social and Economic Studies vol. 61, 4 December 2012: 209-212.
Smith, Faith Lois. "Review Forum." Rev. of Caribbean Middlebrow: Leisure Culture and the Middle Class, by Belinda Edmondson. Interventions vol. 13, 4 february 2012: 666-669.
Smith, Faith Lois, ed. Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean (Charlottesville:UVA Press, 2011.. 2011 ed. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Caribbean Literature and Sexuality”." The Routledge Companion to Anglophone CAribbean Literature. 2011 ed. Ed. Michael A. Bucknor and Alison Donnell. London: Routledge, 2011. 403-411.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Only His Hat is Left”? Re-Situating Not-Yet Narratives.”." Small Axe 15, 2. 35 (2011): 197-208.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Of Laughter and Kola Nuts: Or What Does Africa Have to do with the African Diaspora?”." Gendering the African Diaspora: Women, Culture, and Historical Change in the Caribbean and Nigerian Hinterland.. 2010 ed. vol. 2010 Ed. Judith A. Byfield, La Ray Denzer, and Anthea Morrison. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. 21-37.
Smith, Faith Lois. "“Seeing with New Eyes: New Editions of Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Caribbean Literary Texts.”." Journal of West Indian Literature 19. 1 (2010): 106-112.
Smith, Faith Lois. "¿Can Anything Good Come Out of Cedros? Nation Language in Nineteenth-Century Trinidad.¿." Shibboleths: Journal of Comparative Theory 1, 2. January 2007 (2007)
Smith, Faith Lois. "¿Crosses/Crossroads/Crossings.¿ Book Discussion: M. Jacqui Alexander¿s Pedagogies of Crossing.." small axe vol. 24 October 2007: 130-138.
Editor-in-Chief Colin Palmer. Associate Editors Lisa Gail Collins, Marcyliena Morgan, Faith Smith, James Sweet, and Robert Reid-Pharr., ed. Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History: The Black Experience in America. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan Reference, 2005.
Smith, Faith Lois. Creole Recitations: John Jacob Thomas and Colonial Formation in the Late Nineteenth-Century Caribbean. University of Virginia Press, 2002.
Smith, Faith Lois. "You Know You're West Indian If: Codes of Authenticity in Colin Channer's Waiting In Vain." Small Axe 10. (2001): 41-59.
Smith, Faith Lois Guest Editor. "Small Axe 7: Special Issue on Genders and Sexualities." (2000).
Smith, Faith Lois. "Beautiful Indians, Troublesome Negroes, and Nice White Men: Caribbean Romances and the Invention of Trinidad." Caribbean Romances: The Politics of Regional Representation. Ed. Belinda Edmondson. University Press of Virginia, 1999
Smith, Faith Lois. "Coming Home to the Real Thing: Gender and Intellectual Life in the Anglophone Caribbean." South Atlantic Quarterly 93 (Fall 1994) 93. (1994).