Amanda Leigh Bryan

Amanda Bryan received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and teaches composition and literature at George Mason University. Her research focuses on postcolonial studies, Anglophone Caribbean studies, and gender and sexuality studies. She has been published in the Journal of West Indian Literature and Caribbean Quarterly.

Current Research

My current research interests include how postcolonial cultural studies (including, but not limited to, sexuality studies, women and gender studies, and class theory) intersects with indigenous research methods and how the teaching of both can enhance ideas of belonging and community.

Selected Publications

“Embodied Errantry: Aldrick’s Relational Masculinity in The Dragon Can’t Dance.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, forthcoming.

“Tracing Errantry: Tan-Tan’s Path to Personal Survival in Midnight Robber.” Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 4, November 2021, pp. 411-426.

“‘The thing relayed as well as the thing related’: Constructing Female Strength through Errantry in Nalo Hopkinson’s “Robber Queen” Folktales.” Journal of West Indian Literature, vol. 29, no. 2, April 2021, pp. 90-107.

“Decolonization and Mysticism in William Butler Yeats’s The Celtic Twilight and The Secret Rose.” Irish Studies Review, vol. 23, February 2015, pp. 68-89.

“Alice’s Struggle with Imperialism: Undermining the British Empire through Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The Final Chapters: Concluding Papers of The Journal of Children’s Literature Studies, vol.9, issue 3, Wizard’s Tower Press, London, October 2013, pp. 22-32.

Courses Taught

Composition—ENGH 101

My course highlights the connections between rhetoric, public writing, and inquiry-based research. Students practice writing as a learnable skill through developing narrative arguments, research arguments, and a genre/audience revision project. The course further identifies writing as a process through scaffolded writing activities and reflective writing.

Texts and Contexts: Caribbean Women Writers – ENGH 202

This “texts and contexts” course centers the work that women writers perform (in both the sense of “accomplish” and “acting”) in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora. We discuss topics that highlight the positions, benefits, and difficulties for women in the Caribbean, largely informed by Black feminist theory and postcolonial feminism. More broadly, we develop appreciations for and understandings of literature, literary elements, and literary criticisms. Specifically, how cultural components appear and inform one another across texts.

Advanced Composition - ENGH 302

My course works through the intensive process of a semester-long research project, specific to students' discipline expectations. Students practice building multiple research logs (including exigence, keywords, research questions, new offerings, and syntheses) with the goal of composing genre-specific literature reviews and audience-specific advocacy letters. 

Dimensions of Writing and Literature - ENGH 305

My course teaches students the conventions of writing in literary studies while emphasizing writing processes. Students develop interpretive skills for further study in the English major through the teaching of in-depth close reading, intertextual analysis, and critical reading in scholarship, culminating in an extensive research portfolio.

Reading the Arts: Postcolonial Creative Cultures - HNRS 122

My honors seminar focuses on instilling inquiry and collaboration as bedrocks of higher learning through analyzing the questions raised by colonial and postcolonial creative works (prose, poetry, drama, visual art and vocal art). Most inquiries are informed by texts created both during colonization in response to imperialism and those composed “post-colonization,” which analyze the effects of colonial power. The course’s apex is a collaborative artistic project and presentation of a postcolonial concept.

Education

PhD, English, University of North Carolina—Greensboro, 2019

Post-Baccalaureate Certificate: Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2019

MA, English, North Carolina State University, 2013

BA, English and Sociology, University of Sioux Falls, 2010, summa cum laude

Recent Presentation

“Generic Errantry: Writing to Right Patriarchal Control of Female Sexuality in Literature.” Caribbean Studies Forum Conference, University of Belize, Belmopan, October 2019.

“Masculine Identity: Moving Through Calvary Hill in The Dragon Can’t Dance.” 37th Annual West Indian Literature Conference, University of Miami, October 2018.

“Classed Identity: Tracking Stasis in A House for Mr. Biswas.” Caribbean Studies Conference, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, April 2018.

“‘The thing related as well as the thing relayed’: Female Strength and Knowledge in ‘Tan-Tan the Robber Queen’ Folktales.” Caribbean Studies Forum Conference, University of Belize and East Carolina University, Belmopan, March 2018.