Spring 2024 Student Office Hours

Wednesdays and Fridays 1:00 - 2:00pm & by appointment

Contact Professor for Zoom ID and password

Biography:

Nnenna Onyima holds a BA from Imo State University, Nigeria and a Masters Degree from the University of Virginia. She studies the representation of spirits and bodies in African literature and film. Her dissertation project stages an interdisciplinary conversation between African literature and film on the one hand and African history, anthropology, philosophies and religions on the other to make a case for incorporating spiritual identities into our engagement with bodies in African narratives.  Before enrolling at UVA’s French graduate studies program, Nnenna taught French at the Institute Français du Nigeria and at private schools in Nigeria.

Research Interests

African Literature and Cinema

Global Black Literatures

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Transnational Feminisms

Post/coloniality

Selected Honours/Awards

Dumas Malone Graduate Research Fellowship at the University of Virginia                                  

Visiting Fellow to the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC). The University of Sydney

Institutionally Supported Southern Regional Educational Board (SREB) Scholar

Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation Fall 2023 Graduate Global Research Grants

Courses

FREN 1010, 1020, 2010, 2020, 3032

UVA in Lyon Study Abroad Instructor

Graduate Teaching Assistant UVA J-Term in Senegal

Selected Scholarly Activity

“(Re)Emerging “Barbarism”: Tech, Spirits and Temporal Convergence in Mati Diop’s Atlantics (2019).” The 2024 Canadian Association of African Studies Conference, The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS) at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, June 12 -16, 2024.

“Contaminating European Filiations: 'Borderization' in Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète memoire des hommes (2021)." The 49th annual meeting and conference of the African Literature Association, The University of Louisville, KY, May 23-25, 2024.

“The Wo/man, His Spirit, Her Body: Reading Agency in Léonora Miano’s La saison de l’ombre.” The 65th annual African Studies Association conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 2022