MaryEllen (Ellie) Higgins  Associate Professor of English Office: Penn State University Greater Allegheny Main 213 4000 University Drive McKeesport, PA 15132 Telephone: 412-675-9461 Email: mxh68@psu.edu

EDUCATION:

Ph. D., Comparative Literature, The University of Texas at Austin, 2001.

PUBLISHED BOOKS:

Hollywood's Africa After 1994. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2012.

Historical Dictionary of French Cinema. Book co-authored with Dayna Oscherwitz. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007. Published in paperback as The A to Z of French Cinema, 2009.

PUBLISHED ESSAYS:

"From Negritude to Migritude? Moussa Sene Absa’s Ainsi meurent les anges." African Literature Today 28, 2010.

"Ngambika and Grassroots Fiction: Amma Darko’s The Housemaid and Faceless." Invited essay in Broadening the Horizon: Critical Introductions to Amma Darko, ed. Vincent Odamtten. Oxfordshire, UK: Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2007.

"Writing Haiti from New York: Local and Cosmopolitan Resistance in Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory." In African Literatures at the Millennium, ed. Arthur Drayton, Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka, and Peter Ukpokodu. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007.

"Transnational, Transcultural Feminisms? Amma Darko's Response in Beyond the Horizon." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 25.2, 2006.

"Creating an Alternative Library: Amma Darko Interviewed by Ellie Higgins." Journal of Commonwealth Literature 39.2, 2004.

"Urban Apprenticeships and Senegalese Narratives of Development." Research in African Literatures. 33.3, 2002.

CURRENT PROJECT:

African Cinema and Human Rights (monograph)

COURSES TAUGHT:

CMLIT 030: Introduction to African Literature

CMLIT 132: Nobel Prize Literature

CMLIT 143: Human Rights and World Literature

CMLIT 153: International Cultures: Literature and Film

COMM 150: Cinema Art

ENGL 182: Literature and Empire

ENGL 185: The World Novel (in translation)

ENGL 200: Introduction to Critical Reading

ENGL 486: The World Novel in English

ENGL/WMNST 490: Women Writers and Their Worlds

FR 138: French Culture through Film

RESEARCH AREAS:

African Literature and Cinema in English, French, and Wolof

French Cinema

Representations of Africa in Western Cinema

Cinema, Literature and Human Rights

TRAVEL:

Austria, Barbados, Canada, England, France, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Mali, Mexico,

Morocco, Senegal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad, Venezuela, Vietnam

RECENT SERVICE ACTIVITIES:

Coordinator, Vietnam Study Trip, 2012

Chair, Promotion and Tenure Committee, Penn State Greater Allegheny

Review Editor, Resources for American Literary Study

Program Committee, Silk Screen Film Festival

Specialist Reader, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature

Executive Committee, Teaching International

Co-Coordinator, Ireland Study Trip, 2008

Coordinator, Paris Study Trip, 2007

Coordinator, Cannes Film Festival Study Trip, 2006

Page maintained by: mxh68@psu.edu

e maintained by: mxh68@psu.edu