Stephanie Li

Assistant Professor of English

PhD  Cornell University
MFA  Cornell University
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, African American literature, women's literature, cultural studies, fiction writing

Research/Writing interests

My current research project, "Black Female Resistance and the Politics of Sexual Agency," explores tactics of resistance employed by enslaved women. I examine how female narrators manipulate their social positions, most importantly as mothers and objects of white male sexual desire, to establish agency and exercise a notion of freedom derived from a radical assertion of care and desire. My analysis not only introduces reproduction, mother-child relationships, and community into discourses concerning resistance, but it also expands individual liberation to include the courage to express personal desire and the freedom to love. I propose that black women operate upon what I term “intra-independence,” a form of freedom that works through and within relationships rather than upon the valorization of individual achievements.

Selected publications

• “Love and the Trauma of Resistance in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora,” in Callaloo 29.1 (2006)
• “Resistance, Silence, and Plaçees Bon’s Octoroon Mistress and Louisa Picquet,” forthcoming in American Literature
• “Humanizing the Horrific in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye” and “Hate, War, and Sex: The Secrets of Toni Morrison’s Love,” forthcoming in The Fiction and Prose of Toni Morrison: Teaching Race, Culture, and Identity, ed. Jami Carlacio
• “Thief,” in Coloring Book: An Eclectic Anthology of Fiction and Poetry by Multicultural Writers, ed. Boice-Terrel Allen, Pittsburgh Rattlecat Press 2003, 203-210
  

Teaching

Courses in American literature, studies in the novel, creative writing, contemporary American fiction, African American literature, women's literature

Recent undergraduate courses

• Survey of American Literature (fall 2006)
• Immigration and Contemporary American Autobiography (fall 2006)
• Introduction to African American Literature (fall 2005)
• Creative Writing (fall 2005)
  

Honors and activities

• Provost’s Fellowship, Cornell University
• Alice Cook Hanson Award
• Liu Memorial Award
• Multicultural Alliance Fellow
• First Place Best Short Fiction, MARY Literary Journal
  

Stephanie Li's CV

sli12@mail.rochester.edu
(585) 275-5760
319 Morey Hall