Vivian M. May is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies at Syracuse University.  Her articles on the philosophical contributions of African American and women writers, black feminist theory, interdisciplinary methods, intersectional epistemologies, and feminist disability studies have appeared in such journals as Hypatia, Callaloo, Prose Studies, NWSA Journal, Women's Studies Quarterly, Studies in the Literary Imagination, and Womanist Theory & Research. She teaches courses in feminist theory, feminist epistemology, literature, and introduction to women’s studies. In 2005, she received the Meredith Teaching Recognition Award at Syracuse University and in 2000 she was named to Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. She received her Ph.D. in Women's Studies from Emory University in 1997 and her B.A. in Humanistic Studies from McGill University in 1991. VIEW FULL CV (PDF)



EDUCATION
Ph.D. 1997: Women’s Studies: Emory University, Atlanta, GA
B.A.1991: Humanistic Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada           

GRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT
Anna Julia Cooper's Black Feminist Thought (PDF)
Epistemologies of Ignorance (PDF)
Transnational Feminist Theory
Feminist Epistemologies (PDF)

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT
Introduction to Women’s Studies (PDF)
Feminist Theory (PDF)
Anna Julia Cooper's Black Feminist Thought (PDF)

SAMPLE ESSAYS & ARTICLES
"Disciplinary Desires and Undisciplined Daughters: Negotiating the Politics of a Women's Studies Doctoral Education."   NWSA Journal 14.1 (2002): 134-159. (VIEW PDF)

"Fixated on Ability: Questioning Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Theories of Resistance."  Vivian M. May and Beth A. Ferri. Prose Studies 27.1 & 2 (2005): 120-140. (VIEW PDF)

"Reading Melvin Dixon's Vanishing Rooms: Experiencing 'the ordinary rope that can change in a second to a lyncher's noose or a rescue line.'" Callaloo 23.1 (2000):  366-381. (VIEW PDF)

"Thinking from the Margins, Acting at the Intersections: Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South."  Hypatia 19.2 (2004): 74-91. (VIEW PDF)

PUBLICATIONS
Book in progress
Anna Julia Cooper: Visionary Black Feminist
Drawing from Cooper’s entire body of work, I argue that many of Cooper's forward-thinking ideas have been misread as elitist or conciliatory rather than as visionary theories & methods of dissent. Although it can be tempting to celebrate Cooper’s life and work as exceptional, this can result in a reductive tokenism. Via a sustained discussion of Cooper's ideas as early examples of feminist theory and Africana philosophy, I challenge this twin dynamic of biographical visibility (in which Cooper's life achievements are celebrated as exceptional) and theoretical obscurity (in which, for example, Cooper's theorizing at the intersection of race, gender, and nation--a major philosophical and methodological contribution--has gone relatively unnoticed).  To highlight the nuances of her vision and to illustrate how her rich ideas remain relevant, I focus on some key themes: how marginalized groups rupture seemingly impenetrable historical and philosophical paradigms; how interdisciplinary, socially located analysis has significant epistemic implications; and how a cross-cultural, comparative feminist framework alters conceptions of black women's agency, history, and politics.

Literature & Theory
"Eroticized Violence, Epistemic Ignorance, and Strategic Resistance: Gwendolyn Brooks' Poetic Response to the Lynching of Emmett Till."  Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination.  Eds. Christopher P. Mettress and Harriet Pollack.  (In review, LSU Press).

"Willful and Strategic Ignorance in Cereus Blooms at Night."  Hypatia 21.3 (forthcoming 2006).

"Dislocation and Desire in Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night."  Studies in the Literary Imagination 37.1 (2004): 97-122.

"Thinking from the Margins, Acting at the Intersections: Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South."  Hypatia 19.2 (2004): 74-91. (VIEW PDF)

McCaskill, Barbara, Vivian M. May, and Beth A. Ferri, eds.  Black Feminist Theorizing across the Disciplines: Special Double Issue.  Womanist Theory & Research 3.2 & 4.1 (2001/2002).

"Black Feminist Theorizing across the Disciplines-An Introduction."  Womanist Theory and Research, 3.2 & 4.1  (2001/2002): 2-8.

"Reading Melvin Dixon's Vanishing Rooms: Experiencing 'the ordinary rope that can change in a second to a lyncher's noose or a rescue line.'" Callaloo 23.1 (2000):  366-381. (VIEW PDF)

"Ambivalent Narratives, Fragmented Selves: Performative Identities and the Mutability of Roles in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain."   New Critical Essays on James Baldwin's  Go Tell It on the Mountain.  Ed. Trudier Harris.  New York: Cambridge UP, 1996.  97-126.

"Cross Purposes: The Autobiographies of Idella Parker and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings."  Southern Changes 16:2 (1994):  13-17.

Interdisciplinary Methods & Pedagogy
“Disciplining Feminist Futures? “Undisciplined” Reflections about the Women’s Studies Ph.D.” Women’s Studies for the Future.  Ed. Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy.  New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2005.  185-206.

"Disciplinary Desires and Undisciplined Daughters: Negotiating the Politics of a Women's Studies Doctoral Education."   NWSA Journal 14.1 (2002): 134-159. (VIEW PDF)

"The Ideologue, the Pervert and the Nurturer--or--Negotiating Student Perceptions in Teaching Introductory Women's Studies Courses."  Teaching Introduction to Women's Studies: Student Expectations and Classroom Strategies.  Ed. Carolyn DiPalma and Barbara Scott Winkler. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999.  21-35.

Feminist Disability Studies
"Fixated on Ability: Questioning Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Theories of Resistance."  Vivian M. May and Beth A. Ferri. Prose Studies 27.1 & 2 (2005): 120-140. (VIEW PDF)

"'I'm a Wheelchair Girl, Now': Abjection, Intersectionality, and Subjectivity in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter."  Vivian M. May and Beth A. Ferri. Women's Studies Quarterly 30.1-2 (2002): 131-150.

Encyclopedic Entries and Reviews
Review of Emer O'Beirne's Reading Nathalie Sarraute: Dialogue and Distance  (Oxford, 1999).  Modern Fiction Studies 44.4, Winter 2001.

"Anna Julia Cooper."  African American Authors, 1745-1945: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical  Sourcebook.  Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson.  Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 2000.  80-87.

"A.R. Flowers" and "Michael Thelwell."  The Oxford Companion to African American Literature.  Ed. William L. Andrews, Trudier Harris and Frances Smith Foster. New York: Oxford, 1997.

"Patricia Hill Collins," "Anna Julia Cooper," and "Margaret Laurence."   Feminist Writers.  Ed. Pamela Kester-Shelton.  Detroit: St. James P, 1996.

DISSERTATION
Dividing Lines and Binding Words: Border Subjectivity in Contemporary Canadian and American Literature.  Advisor: Rebecca S. Chopp.  Emory University, 1997