Kameelah L. Martin

College of Charleston - Global Challenges Teaching Award Exploring Racial Justice

Kameelah L. Martin is a literary and cultural studies scholar whose expertise sits at the crossroads of Literatures of the African Diaspora and Folklore Studies. She is a professor of African American Studies and English at the College of Charleston. She holds a master’s degree in Afro-American Studies from the University of California Los Angeles and completed her Ph.D. at Florida State University where she trained in the African American literary and vernacular traditions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  

Kameelah has published two monographs and edited an anthology of essays. Her research explores the lore cycle of the conjure woman archetype in literature, film, and popular culture.  Her interdisciplinary interests spans such topics as African traditional religions, African American genealogy, and Beyoncé. She is a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute scholar and a Fulbright-Hays Group Program Abroad alum (Ghana). She is deeply committed to teaching the histories and cultures of the African Diaspora often through the lens of Black Feminism. Kameelah will use the Global Challenges Teaching Award to promote cultural competency for sustainable racial justice advocacy while also building collaborations between Black Studies programs in the UK and US.