Degrees

Ph.D. African and African American Studies, Harvard University; M.A. English and American Literature, Harvard University, M.A. English, Syracuse University; B.A. English, Louisiana State University

Short Bio

Laura Murphy received her Ph.D. in African and African American Studies at Harvard University in 2008. Her research focuses on African literatures, historical and modern slavery, postcolonial studies, global literatures, and Black Atlantic cultures. Her first book, Metaphor and the Slave Trade in West African Literature (Ohio University Press 2012), examines the coded ways West African writers have memorialized the trauma of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. She is editor of a collection of first-person narratives of modern day slavery entitled Documenting Modern Slavery (Columbia University Press, forthcoming). Her other publications have appeared in Research in African Literatures, Studies in the Novel, The Journal of the African Literature Association and The Zeleza Post. In addition to her academic work, she is the National College Chapter Coordinator for Free the Slaves and the director of the Survivors of Slavery speakers network.

Courses Taught

• Bought and Sold: Slavery and Abolition in the 21st Century (freshman seminar)
• Critical Reading and Writing
• Images of Africa
• Writing about Literature
• Magical Realities, Global Fictions

Learn more about Laura Murphy

• View Curriculum Vitae