Michelle M. Wright
Associate Professor
Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Ph.D. Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, 1997
110J Lind Hall
(612)626-7122
wrigh391@umn.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Michelle M. Wright was born in Rome, Italy, the daughter of an African American diplomat and Czech-Polish American schoolteacher, and lived there as well as in Florence, Italy; Rabat, Morocco; The Hague, Holland, and Waterloo, Belgium. She did one year of undergraduate study through an international program at the University of Salzburg, Austria, and was the Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the Amerika Institut of the University of Munich in 2006-7.
Michelle works on theories of blackness and the African/Black Diaspora, looking specifically at how "blackness" as both an individual and group identity achieves different meanings depending on gender, sexuality, class, nationality, and national origins. She is currently working on her next book project, The Physics of Blackness: The African Diaspora in the Postwar Era, and has lectured extensively in both Europe and the United States, including Humboldt University in Berlin, the University of Paris, the University of Rome, as well as Yale, Brown, and Cornell universities.
Department Affiliations
Departments of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies; American Studies; African American and African Studies
Areas of Expertise
African diaspora studies; Black Atlantic studies; Black European studies; African American studies; literary theory; postcolonial theory.
Selected Publications
Blackness and Sexualities. FORECAAST (Forum for European Contributions in African American Studies). Ed. Michelle M Wright and Antje Schuhmann. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2007.
Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices. Ed. Michelle M. Wright, Faith Wilding, and Maria Fernandez. New York: Autonomedia Press, 2003.
Reading the Black German Experience. Ed. Michelle M. Wright and Tina M. Campt. A special issue of Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters 26.2 (2003).
"What is Black Identity?"Cahiers Charles V. : L’Objet Identité: Épistémologie et Transversalité 40 (2006).
"Finding a Place in Cyberspace: Black Women, Technology and Identity."Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 26.1 (2005).
"Others-from-Within from Without: Afro-German Subject Formation and the Challenge of a Counter-Discourse."Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters. 26.2 (2003).
"Racism and Technology."I Switch: Social/Networks. San Jose State University. 6.2 (2001).
"A Brief History of African American Thought in the Twentieth Century”. Black Inc. Africanismi in America. Ed. E.S. Tiberini. Rome: Centro d’Informazione e Stampa Universitaria (CISU) Press, 2007.
"Das Städtische Diaspora: Schwarze Bewußtseinen in Berlin, London und Paris" (The Urban Diaspora: Black Subjectivities in Berlin, London and Paris). Der Black Atlantic. Ed. Paul Gilroy, Tina M. Campt and Fatima El-Tayeb. Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt Verlag, 2004.
Graduate Courses
Theorizing the Black Diaspora
Undergraduate Courses
Black Women Writers of the United States
Murder Made Easier: The Detective Novel from Victoria to Today