JoannaDavis-McElligattPh.D.Assistant Professor | Director of Graduate StudiesEnglishFacultyjoanna.davis-mcelligatt@unt.edu409E Language Bldg

FacultyEnglishEducation 2010 PhD in English, University of Iowa 2007 MA (en passant) in English, University of Iowa 2002 BA (with Honors) in English and Creative Writing, University of Kansas Biography Dr. Joanna Davis-McElligatt is an Assistant Professor of Black Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of North Texas and Director of Graduate Studies. She is the author of Black Aliens: Kinship in the Cosmic Diaspora (The Ohio State University Press, 2026). She is at work on her second monograph, entitled Nubia (UP of Mississippi, under contract), which offers a critical introduction to and study of Wonder Woman’s Black twin sister. Dr. Davis-McElligatt is the co-editor of four volumes: bell hooks’ Radical Pedagogy: New Visions of Feminism, Justice, Love, and Resistance in the Classroom (Bloomsbury, 2025); BOOM! SPLAT! Comics and Violence (UP of Mississippi 2024); Narrating History, Home, and Dyaspora: Critical Essays on Edwidge Danticat (UP of Mississippi 2022; winner of the Best Edited Book Prize from SAMLA); and Narratives of Marginalized Identities in Higher Education: Inside and Outside the Academy (Routledge 2019). Her work can be found in Mississippi Quarterly, south: a scholarly journal, Inks, The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel, and Comics Is … Debating the Subject of Comics Studies, among many other places. She is at work on two new co-edited collections: Afrosouthernfuturism and The Bloomsbury Handbook of bell hooks Studies.  Dr. Davis-McElligatt’s areas of teaching and research include Africana Studies, Comics Studies, Southern Studies, and 20th and 21st century U.S. Literary Studies. She is currently serving on the boards of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Southern Cultures, and The William Faulkner Society.  She served as the President of the Comics Studies Society from 2023-2024. Before joining UNT, she spent nine years at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Recent Awards and Honors 2025 Preston Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching, Department of English 2025 President’s Council Teaching Award, UNT Faculty Senate and Office of the President 2023 Dr. Marilyn Morris Award for Outstanding Academic Contributions to LGBTQ+ Studies, College of the Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) and Women’s and Gender Studies Program 2022 Kesterson Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching, Department of English Selected Recent Publications 2025 “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” The Poetry of Bob Dylan. Ed. Mike Chasar. Blomsbury. 19-24. 2025 “Sleuthing the Grammatext of Love and Rockets X.” Snapshots: Teaching Love and Rockets. Eds. Frederick Luis Aldama and William “Memo” Nerricio. Amatl Comix. 88-102. 2023 “Black Looking and Looking Black: African American Cartoon Aesthetics.” The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel. Eds. Fabrice Leroy, Jan Baetens, and Hugo Frey. Cambridge UP: 193-209.  2022 “On Thingification: Faulkner and Afropessimism.” The New William Faulkner Studies. Eds. Sarah Gleeson-White and Pardis Dabashi. Cambridge UP: 166-182.  2022 “Toward a Pedagogy of Pain.” The Affects of Pedagogy in Literary Studies. Eds. Christopher Lloyd and Hilary Emmett. Routledge: 199-210.  2022 “And now she sings it”: Conjure Healing as Abolitionist Alternative in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.” Special Issue: Mass Incarceration in the U.S. South. Eds. Katie Owens-Murphy and Jeanine Weeks Schroer. Mississippi Quarterly 74.1: 103-123.  2021 “Queering the Mammy: Southern Black Domestics and Revolutionary Mothering as Social Practice.” Through Mama’s Eyes: Unique Perspectives on Southern Matriarchy. Eds. Cheylon Woods and Kiwana McClung. U of Louisiana P. 33-46.  2021 “A Heritage Unique in the Ages: Politics, Race, and Gender in Anna Julia Cooper’s A Voice from the South by a Black Woman from the South.” A History of the Literature of the U.S. South. Ed. Harilaos Stecopoulos. Cambridge UP: 203-214.  2019 “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: Teaching Black Lives Matter in Louisiana.” Special Issue: #southernsyllabus. Ed. David A. Davis. south: a scholarly journal 50.2: 114-125.