MaryEllen (Ellie) Higgins

Associate Professor of English, Pennyslvania State University, Greater Allegheny

EDUCATION:

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

BOOKS:

The Western in the Global South. Co-edited with Rita Keresztesi and Dayna Oscherwitz. London and New York: Routledge, 2015.

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

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

 

JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS:

"The Ghostly Matter of Asylum in Kivu Ruhorahoza's A Tree Has Fallen." Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 56.1, 2019.

"At the Intersection of Trauma, Precarity, and African Cinema: A Reflection on Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Grigris." In Kenneth W. Harrow and Carmela Garritano (Eds.), The Companion to African Cinema. Wiley Blackwell, 2018.

"Speculative Migration and the Project of Futurity in Sylvestre Amoussou's Africa Paradis." In Cajetan Iheka and Jack Taylor (Eds.), African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race, and Space. University of Rochester Press, 2018.

"Scandalous Women, Patriarchal Nationhood, and Narratives of 'Development': Assia Djebar's Fantasia and Ingrid Sinclair's Flame." In Obioma Nnaemeka and Jennifer Thorington Springer (Eds.), Unraveling Gender, Race, and Diaspora. Africa World Press, 2016.

"The Winds of African Cinema." African Studies Review 58.3, 2015.

"Trashing the Western’s Revenge Narrative in Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Daratt." In The Western in the Global South. Routledge, 2015.

"Hollywood’s Cowboy Humanitarians in Black Hawk Down and Tears of the Sun." In Hollywood's Africa After 1994. Ohio University Press, 2012.

"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. Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2007.

"Writing Haiti from New York: Local and Cosmopolitan Resistance in Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory." In Arthur Drayton, Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka, and Peter Ukpokodu (Eds.), African Literatures at the Millennium. 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.

 

FILM PRODUCTION:

Executive Producer, Europa, Based on a True Story, directed by Kivu Ruhorahoza, 2019

Associate Producer, Naked Reality, directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2016

Associate Producer, Les choses et les mots de Mudimbe, directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2015


CURRENT PROJECT:

Trauma in African Cinema (monograph)

 

COURSES TAUGHT:

Masterworks of African Literature

Africa in Cinema

Mapping Identity, Difference, and Place

Human Rights and World Literature

Cinema and Globalization

Social Justice and the Image

 

RECENT SERVICE ACTIVITIES:

Review Editor, Resources for American Literary Study

Undergraduate Research Coordinator, Penn State Greater Allegheny

Chair, Promotion and Tenure Committee, Penn State Greater Allegheny

Executive Committee, Teaching International, Penn State Greater Allegheny