Faculty | Africana Studies | SIU

Joseph A. Brown, S. J., Ph.D. a native of East St. Louis, Illinois, is a Catholic priest with an extensive academic and pastoral career. When he graduated from St. Louis University with the BA in Philosophy, he attended Johns Hopkins University, where he gained a Master's Degree in Creative Writing. After his ordination to the priesthood (1972) he taught Theater and Poetry at Creighton University for several years (eventually becoming artist-in-residence in 1978). Later, after receiving both the Master's degree in Afro-American Studies and the Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University, Fr. Brown taught at the University of Virginia and at Xavier University in New Orleans.

Qiyu Chen is a scholar of African literature with transnational and comparative perspectives. She earned her dual-title Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and African Studies from Pennsylvania State University in 2024 and her B.A. in English and History from Tsinghua University (Beijing) in 2019. Her research interests include modern African literature (Anglophone and Kiswahili), Cold War literary studies, Africa-China literary relations, Black Internationalism, postcolonial theory, and African feminism.

Dr. Abd-el-Kader CHEREF is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at SIU which he has joined this 2024 Fall semester. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and Africana Studies trom the University of Exeter in the UK. Previously, he earned an MA in Atrican American Literature from the University of Nottingham (UK) and the University of Oran in Algeria.

His anti-racist and justice-oriented teaching and research interests center on 20th and 21st century Anglophone and Francophone postcolonial African literatures, post-WWII African American literature, African cinema, colonization, decolonization, as well as Pan-Africanism.

His teaching philosophy is centered around the idea that all students are welcome in his classroom where diverse standpoints, ideas, and voices are appreciated.

Malawian poet, editor and fiction writer, born on 16 October 1949; B.A. (with Credit) University of Zambia, 1976; M.A. (Creative Writing) Brown University, 1980; M.A. (Afro-American Studies) Yale University, 1982 and Ph.D. (English Literature—Yeats) Brown University, 1987. Currently a Professor in the Black American Studies Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, I have taught at Howard University, Tamkang University in Taipei, Taiwan, University of Nebraska at Omaha, St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, as well as Brown and Yale Universities. For a year I served as Education Attaché in the Malawi Embassy in Washington, D.C. I have also worked as English Editor for NECZAM Ltd., the former national publishers of Zambia in Lusaka (1976 – 1978) and, as an undergraduate student at the University of Malawi, I freelanced on the M.B.C. (Malawi Broadcasting Corporation) in Blantyre, Malawi (1971 – 73).

Dr. Leonard Kodzo Gadzekpo was born in Cote d'Ivoire and grew up in Ghana. He got his first degree from the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, and taught in Ghana and Nigeria. He spent four years in Germany as an artist working on religious art pieces for the St. Stepanus Katholische Gemeinde in Oldenburg and studied at Universitaet Oldenburg and Salzburg Universitaet, Austria. From 1990 to 1997 he did graduate studies at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio and earned a M.A. in German, a M.F.A. in Painting and a Ph.D. in American Culture Studies. 

J.-P. Reed received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He joined Sociology at SIU in 2009, became an Affiliate of Africana Studies in 2010, and since 2023 he has been an Africana Studies faculty. Dr. Reed teaches courses on W.E.B. Du Bois, Racial Inequality, the Civil Rights Movement, and Race and Ethnic Relations. Thus far, his scholarship has focused on understanding revolutionary/political agency, much of it centered on subjective factors: political emotions, popular culture/ideology (e.g., religion), and narrative. His scholarship also underscores the significance of contingency (events) as an equally important dimension of revolutionary/political agency/mobilization.

Philosophy, Africana Studies