Phyllis Taoua

Phyllis Taoua is professor of Francophone Studies (Africa, Caribbean) and is affiliated with Africana Studies, World Literature and Human Rights Practice at the University of Arizona, Tucson. She is the author of African Freedom: How Africa Responded to Independence (Cambridge UP, 2018) and edits an audio-visual archive documenting the idea of freedom in Africa at africanfreedom.arizona.edu. Her other publications include: Forms of Protest: Anti-Colonialism and Avant-Gardes in Africa, the Caribbean and France (Heinemann, 2002); special issues on Sony Labou Tansi, Sembène Ousmane, and Mongo Beti, and more than fifty publications that have appeared in World Literature Today, Cambridge Companion to the African Novel, Transition, SubStance, Research in African Literatures, Cahier d’Études Africaines, South Central Review and Journal of African Cultural Studies. As a recipient of a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation award, she spent a year as a Resident Fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. She served on the Executive Committee of the Forum on African Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the MLA and presents her research in North America, Europe and Africa. She writes Op-Eds about democracy, freedom and social justice, at home and abroad, and was a Tucson Public Voices fellow with the Op-Ed Project.