معرفی
Keyana Parks serves as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, specializing in 20th and 21st century African American literature, satire studies, and Black feminist theory.
Her academic credentials include:
- PhD in English Literature with Certificate in African American Studies, University of Pennsylvania
- BA in English, Spelman College
Dr. Parks' research investigates the satiric mode in Black women's writing as a critical response to the absurdities of post-Civil Rights America. She argues that Black feminist thought has catalyzed satire's evolution from the periphery to the center of African American literary tradition, enabling artists to expose contradictions in race, gender, and power through novels, drama, and visual culture. Her work analyzes how contemporary satirical expressions by figures like Donald Glover and Azie Mira Dungey challenge respectability politics while navigating the complexities of identity in a "post-racial" context.
Recent publications examine satire's role in contemporary African American culture, particularly its capacity to address systemic racism and the paradoxical landscape of the "post" moment—post-Civil Rights, post-Obama, and post-truth. Dr. Parks is currently completing a book manuscript, The Real Absurd: Black Women Writers and the Satiric Mode, which contends that Black women's critical engagement with absurd realities has fundamentally shaped satire's prominence in modern African American literature.
