Academic Staff

Dr Jennifer Terry

Contact Dr Jennifer Terry (email at j.a.terry@durham.ac.uk)

Career Biography

After completing a PhD and teaching at the University of Warwick, Dr. Jennifer Terry came to Durham as Lecturer in English in 2004. Her work is situated at the intersections of such fields as American literature, postcolonial studies and writings of the black diaspora. Previous research has focused on the novels of the contemporary African American author Toni Morrison and appears in various edited collections and journals. Dr. Terry has recently completed a monograph, 'Shuttles in the Rocking Loom': Mapping the Black Diaspora in African American and Caribbean Fiction for Liverpool University Press. This comparative study examines how, through symbolic journeys, trajectories and geographies, selected African American, Caribbean and Black British novelists speak to ongoing debates about postcolonialism, nationalism, essentialism, hybridity and cross-cultural relations in the diaspora engendered by racial slavery. Engaging with the 'spatial' aspect of the theoretical work of Édouard Glissant and Paul Gilroy, it explores and interrogates diverse transnational responses and perspectives. Other research includes writing on Paul Laurence Dunbar, W E B Du Bois, Pauline Hopkins and Walter Mosley.

Dr. Terry has been the recipient of travel and research grants from the British Library, the British Association for American Studies, the British Academy, Stanford University, the JFK Institute for American Studies at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In June 2009 she co-organised the international symposium 'Toni Morrison: New Directions' held at Durham and during Spring 2010 took up a Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Durham.

Supervision

Dr. Terry would welcome supervisees working in the areas listed under Teaching and Research Interests below. She has supervised research on American, African, African American, British and contemporary women's literature.

Teaching Interests

American Literature
Postcolonial Studies
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Fiction

Research Groups

• American Studies
• Critical Theory

Research Interests

• Literatures of Slavery and the Black Diaspora (African American, Caribbean, Black British).

Publications

Books: authored

• Terry, J. (2013). ‘Shuttles in the Rocking Loom’ Mapping the Black Diaspora in African American and Caribbean Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Edited works: journals

• Terry, J. & Nicol, K. (2011). Toni Morrison New Directions. MELUS, 36 (2): The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.

Essays in edited volumes

• Terry, J. (2009). Toni Morrison. In A Companion to Twentieth-Century United States Fiction. Seed, D. Wiley-Blackwell. 480-488.
• Terry, J. (2008). The Fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois. In The Cambridge companion to W.E.B. Du Bois. Zamir, S. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 48-63.
• Terry, J. (2007). 'When All the Wars Are Over': The Utopian Impulses of Toni Morrison’s Postwar Fiction. In Back to Peace: Reconciliation and Retribution in the Postwar Period.. Usandizaga, Aránzazu. & Monnickendam, Andrew. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. 95-115.
• Terry, J. (2006). A New World Religion?: Creolisation and Candomblé in Toni Morrison’s Paradise. In Toni Morrison and the Bible: Contested Intertextualities. Stave, S. A. New York: Peter Lang. 192-214.
• Terry, J. (2005). A New World Religion? Creolisation and Candomblé in Toni Morrison’s Paradise. In Complexions of Race: The African Atlantic.. Gysin, Fritz. & Hamilton, Cynthia S. Münster: Lit Verlag. 61-82.
• Terry, J. (2005). A. J. Verdelle. In The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Ostrom, Hans & Macey, Jr., David J. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 5: 1653-1654.

Journal papers: academic

• Terry, J (2013). ‘Breathing the air of a world so new’ Rewriting the Landscape of America in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. Journal of American Studies
• Terry, J (2013). ‘When the sea of living memory has receded’ Cultural Memory and Literary Narratives of the Middle Passage. Memory Studies 6(4).
• Nicol, K & Terry, J (2011). Introduction: Toni Morrison: New Directions. MELUS 36(2): 7-12.
• Terry, J. (2010). The Work of Cultural Memory: Imagining Atlantic Passages in Literature of the Black Diaspora. Insights 3(19): 1-13.
• Terry, J. (2009). 'When Dey ’Listed Colored Soldiers': Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Poetic Engagement with the Civil War, Masculinity and Violence. Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism 212.
• Terry, J. (2007). 'When Dey ’Listed Colored Soldiers': Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Poetic Engagement with the Civil War, Masculinity and Violence. African American Review 41(2): 269-275.
• Terry, J. (2007). Buried Perspectives: Narratives of Landscape in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. Narrative Inquiry 17(1): 93-118.

Other media: research

• Terry, J. (2005). Reading Toni Morrison Critically. Literature Compass 2(AM 147): 1-9.