Biography
Amy is a 6th year PhD candidate in English & Comparative Literature. Her dissertation, "Shadow Internationalisms: African Diasporic Literature & the 'Jewish Question'', examines how Black writers from Canada, the Caribbean and the US responded to European anti-Semitism, and the ways the latter informed Black conceptions of nationalism, internationalism, and geopolitical relations. Beginning with the Dreyfus Affair and culminating in the Soviet Jewry Movement, the project traces the arc of Black internationalism through the long twentieth century. While Afro-Jewish studies has focused on the U.S.-bound themes and periodizations including assimilation, economic mobility, and the Civil Rights period, her project argues that geopolitical shifts across Europe and the Middle East in the WWII and post-war period overwhelmingly shaped Black conceptions of Jewishness. At the same time, Black writers activated an alternative dialogue on fascism that not only linked it to colonialism but also anticipated a fascism on the part of its victims. Her work is supported by fellowships at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life.
Her work has been published, or is forthcoming, in The Journal of Jewish History and Culture, Public Books, James Baldwin Review, and New Brunswick Today.
