51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ

Dr. Devon Epiphany Clifton is a black feminist literary theorist and Assistant Professor of African American Literature at 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ. Her work in African American literary and cultural studies draws upon psychoanalysis, Caribbean literature, anti-imperial thinking, and gender/sexuality/queer theory. Her first book project, tentatively titled The Object of Blackness: Passing Sketches, develops Spillerian psychoanalytics to investigate the relationship between blackness as an object of thought and reading. Offering both an original theorization of blackness and a methodological intervention, Clifton takes up Winnicottian object relations theory to do so. 

Before coming to 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ, she earned a Ph.D. in English at Brown University where she was also a fellow at the Cogut Institute for The Humanities. She additionally holds an M.A. in English and American Literature from New York University, and a B.A. with Honors in English and Women/Gender Studies from Lafayette College. Her scholarship has been supported by the National Endowment for The Humanities and The Pembroke Center for Research and Teaching on Women. Her published work on Zora Neale Hurston appears in the Journal of American Culture. 

Her teaching interests include experimental forms, aesthetics, the liberatory potential of studying, and thought-solidarity against Western empire.