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Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi

Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Distinguished Professor; Department of English

Tompkins Hall 256

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Bio

Dr. Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi is Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at NC State University and Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is one of the three largest colleges at NC State in terms of student headcount. The mission of the college is to serve the residents of North Carolina and meet the challenges of the 21st century by educating our students to be future leaders and responsible citizens with a distinctive willingness to engage in the life of their communities, their state, and their nation. The college offers baccalaureate, master’s and doctoral degrees in a wide range of traditional and professional disciplines; it serves business, industry, government, public education, and individual citizens of the state through teaching, research, and engagement. These programs are carried out in ten academic units. Currently, the college employs 225 tenured/tenure track faculty, 239 professional track faculty, 97 staff, and 383 graduate teaching and research assistants.

The College has a long history of excellence in diversity, equity, and inclusion. As we continue this tradition in a changing world, the college aims to strengthen its current diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and to identify additional opportunities to enhance its commitment to antiracism and social justice. Dr. Nfah-Abbenyi is responsible for managing and advancing the College’s strategy for promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

Dr. Nfah-Abbenyi is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the author of Gender in African Women’s Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference, Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon, The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba, and Reflections: An Anthology of New Works by African Women Poets, edited with Anthonia Kalu and Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka. She served as Co-editor of a special double issue of Journal des Africanistes 80.1-2 (2010) on “Création littéraire et archives de la mémoire/Literary Creation and the Archives of Memory” and as Guest Editor of special journal issues, including: The Global South 5.2 (2011) on “Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights in the Age of Globalization”; Free Verse 22 (2012) on “Anglophone Cameroonian Poetry”; Tydskrif vir Letterkunde (Journal for Literature) 53.1 (2016) on “Cameroon Literature”; JALA: Journal of the African Literature Association 13.1 (2019) on “The Environments of African Literature”; JALA 14.2 (2020) on “Fragmented Nation or the Anglophone-Francophone Problem in Cameroon.” Furthermore, Dr. Nfah-Abbenyi writes fiction under the pen name Makuchi. Her short story, “Woman of the Lake,” a story about the 1986 Lake Nyos disaster that devastated and wiped out entire communities in the North West Region of Cameroon was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

See her CV for more publications, invited lectures, fiction readings, interviews, conference presentations and other university, state, national and international activities and engagements.

Education

Licence ès lettres bilingues B.A. Bilingual Letters, English and French University of Yaounde 1979

Maîtrise/M.A. African Literature University of Yaounde 1981

Doctorat 3ème Cycle Littérature Négro-Africaine (African and African American) Literature University of Yaounde 1987

Ph.D. Comparative Literature McGill University 1994