Education
  • PhD, American Studies and African American Studies, Yale University, 2003
  • MA, American Studies and African American Studies, Yale University, 1999
  • BA, English, Hampton University, 1996
Academic Appointments
  • Director, African American Studies Program, University of South Carolina, since 2018
  • Professor, University of South Carolina, English and African-American Studies, since 2018
  • Associate Professor, University of South Carolina, English and African American Studies, 2009-2018
  • Visiting Professor, University Studies Abroad Consortium in Florianópolis, Brazil, Summer 2017.
  • Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina, English, 2003-2009
  • Instructor, Yale University, African American Studies, 2001
  • Teaching Assistant, Yale University, English and History, 1998-1999

Other University Affiliations
  • Affiliate USC Faculty, Media Studies
  • Affiliate USC Faculty, Southern Studies
Publications

Books
  • EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest. Rutgers University Press, 2019.
  • Comics and the U.S. South. Eds. Qiana Whitted and Brannon Costello. University Press of Mississippi, 2012.
  • “A God of Justice?” The Problem of Evil in Twentieth-Century Black Literature. University of Virginia Press, 2009. 
Selected Articles
  • “Comics and Emmett Till,” Picturing Childhood: Youth in Transnational Comics. University of Texas Press, 2017.
  • "The Blues Tragicomic: Constructing the Black Folk Subject in McCulloch and Hendrix's Stagger Lee." The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. Rutgers University Press, 2015.
  • "Black Culture, Speculative Fiction, and the Past as Text in Jeremy Love's Bayou." Class, Please Open Your Comics: Essays on Teaching with Graphic Narratives. McFarland, 2015: 195-216.
  • “'And the Negro thinks in hieroglyphics': Comics, Visual Metonymy, and the Spectacle of Blackness." Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Vol. 5. No. 1 (2014): 79-100.
  • “Of Slaves and Other Swamp Things: Black Southern History as Comic Book Horror,” Comics and the U.S. South. Eds. Qiana Whitted and Brannon Costello. University Press of Mississippi, 2012.
  • “Using My Grandmother’s Life as a Model: Richard Wright and the Gendered Politics of Religious Representation,” Southern Literary Journal, 36.2 (2004): 13-30. Reprinted in Harold Bloom, ed., Richard Wright: Bloom's Modern Critical Views, 2nd Edition. New York, Infobase Publishing, 2009.
  • “In My Flesh Shall I See God: Ritual Violence, Racial Redemption, and Countee Cullen’s ‘The Black Christ’,” African American Review, 38.3 (2004): 379-393.
Selected Presentations, Panels, and Invited Lectures
  • Paper, "Interracial Intimacies and the Bodily Excesses of Sophie Campbell’s Wet Moon," Black/White Intimacies: Reimagining History, the South, and the Western Hemisphere, University of Alabama, April 2017.
  • Paper, “‘Death to the Flag, Long Live the South’: Southern Bastards and the Emanuel 9,” American Studies Association, Denver, November 2016.
  • Panelist, “Black Comics and the South,” Planet Deep South Colloquium: Speculative Cultural Production and Africanism in the Black South, Jackson State University, February 2016.
  • Moderator, “Women in Comics,” Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonist Society, Clemson University. October 2015.
  • Panelist, “Roundtable: The Comics Canon,” The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, Greenville, SC, September 2015.
  • Paper, “Race and the Failed Futures of EC Comics” Future in Comics. Stockholm University, September 2015.
  • Panelist, "Race in Comics: Making Representation Matter," HeroesCon, Charlotte NC, June 2015.
  • Paper, "Comics and Emmett Till," (UN)Civil Mediation: A Civil Rights and Visual Culture Symposium. Washington University at St. Louis. April 2015.
  • Lecture, “Comics and Graphic Novels of the South,” for the NEH Project: “Out of the Rice Fields: Vestiges of Gullah Culture in Modern Society,” Georgetown County Library, SC. January 2015.    
  • Lecture, “Race, Controversy, and EC Comics,” Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonist Society, University of Georgia. October 2014
  • Lecture, “Desegregating Comics: Race and Social Justice in 1950s Comics,” Department of English, College of Charleston, SC. September 2014
  • Lecture, “Charles Johnson and Middle Passage,” The Open Book Series, University of South Carolina. April 2014.
  • Lecture, “Comics, Emmett Till, and the Visual Rhetoric of Miscegenation.” Department of English, Louisiana State University. February 2104.
  • Paper, "Comics and Racial Pedagogy from Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story to March: Book One," The Ohio State University Academic Conference at the Festival of Cartoon Art. 2013.
  • Paper, “Science Fictions of Race in EC’s ‘Judgment Day’,” Illustration, Comics, and Animation Conference, Dartmouth College, NH. 2013.
  • Paper, “EC Comics in the Civil Rights Era,” Media and Civil Rights History Symposium, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. 2013.
  • Paper, “Comics Come to Harlem: Race and the Lafargue Clinic’s Case Against Comics,” Black Comic Book Day, Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture, New York, NY. 2013.
  • Respondent, “Black Studies and Comics,” Modern Language Association, Boston, MA. 2013.
  • Paper, “Race and Protest in 1950s American Comics,” Beyond Art: African American Comic Book Culture Symposium, Connecticut College, CT, 2012.
  • Panelist, “Outside the Lines: Refiguring Race in Comics and Graphic Novels,” Loyola Marymount University, CA. 2012.
  • Panelist, “Black Panels, White Gutters: Race, Resistance, and Representation in American Comics and Sequential Art,” American Studies Association Conference, Baltimore, MD. 2011.
  • Panel Organizer, “Comics Pedagogy” and “Representing Race and Class,” International Comic Art Forum, White River Junction, VT. 2010.
  • Paper, “Toni Morrison’s Visual Aesthetic: Reading Jazz and Marguerite Abouet’s Aya,” Toni Morrison Society Biennial Conference, Université de Paris 9 – Saint Denis. 2010.
  • Respondent, “Comics and the U.S. South,” Society for the Study of Southern Literature, New Orleans, LA. 2010.
  • Paper, “Of Slaves and Other Swamp Things: Black Southern History as Comic Book Horror,” International Comic Arts Forum, Chicago, IL. 2009.
  • Lecture, “Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and the Graphic Novel” First Year Reading Experience, University of South Carolina. 2009.
  • Paper, “Blues Tragicomic(s): Constructing the Black Folk Subject in McCulloch and Hendrix’s Stagger Lee,” Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Williamsburg, VA. 2008.
  • Paper, “Skeptics, Backsliders, and Blasphemers: God and the African-American Writer,” African-American Scholarship: New Directions for the 21st Century, Claflin University, Orangeburg, SC. 2007.
  • Paper, “To Tell the Story through Art Alone: Reading Tom Feelings’ The Middle Passage as Graphic Novel,” Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Washington, DC. 2005.​
Awards and Honors
  • Department of English Research Professorship, 2016
  • USC Provost Humanities Grant, 2012-2014
  • English Department Teaching Award, 2012
  • USC College of Arts and Sciences Summer Research Fellowship, 2011
  • USC Institute for African American Studies Research Grant, 2010-2011
  • USC NAACP Andrew Billingsley Faculty Award, 2004
  • Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 2002-2003
  • Yale University Dissertation Fellowship, 2000-2001
  • Yale African American Studies Research Grant, 1998
  • Yale University Graduate School Fellowship, 1996-1999
  • Hurston/Wright Foundation Creative Writing Workshop, 2000
  • Hampton University President's Award, 1996
  • English Departmental Award, 1996.