[email protected]
819 Wilkerson Ave.
Durham, N.C. 27701
Tel: (919) 827-2702
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a doctoral candidate in English at Duke University, earning certificates in
African and African American Studies and Women’s Studies. Her work emphasizes the poetic and
narrative dynamics of gender and resistance in the African Diaspora with an emphasis on activist
publishing. Alexis has published 3 volumes of poetry, an interactive poetry game, a coloring book, a
youth activism workbook, a small anthology and a broadside. She has also curated four visual art
installations, and is the founder of a not-for-profit creationspace called brokenbeautiful press
(www.brokenbeautifulpress.blogspot.com). The interactive publishing model created by
BrokenBeautiful Press is being used across the world, notably by the Shakti Center in Chennai, India.
Through the BrokenBeautiful Press Series Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist mind, Alexis has made
her research on black feminism accessible through monthly potluck gatherings, podcasts, public
access television and educational videos. Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Sessions
happen in Durham, NC, Chicago, IL, Washington DC and Ethiopia.
Alexis is a member of the advisory board of Allied Media Projects (www.alliedmediaconference.org) Alexis’s
poetry is most recently featured in the bestselling anthologies Does Your Mama Know?
(www.redbonepress.com) and Growing Up Girl (www.girlchildpress.com). Alexis’s poetry is also
featured in an anthology of women writers entitled Leaving Home, Becoming Home that features
work by Alice Walker, bell hooks and Jessica Care Moore (www.innerlightpublishing.com). Her work
also appears in a number of national magazines including Mosaic, Left Turn and Make/Shift and New
Black Magazine. Alexis has been leading creative empowerment workshops with children, young
people and adults since she was 14 years old. She is Youth Programming Coordinator for
SpiritHouse a co-founder of UBUNTU, a Women of Color and survivor-led Durham-based
organization responding to sexual violence. Alexis has designed her own courses in African
American Literary Production and Feminist Theory and was targeted by David Horowitz for
“radical” teaching based on her course descriptions. Alexis is also on the board of the Davis-Putter
Scholarship fund which provides scholarships to student activists.
Education:
B.A., American Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY, 2004 (Magna Cum
Laude).
University of California, Berkeley: Independent Research, June - August, 2003.
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia: Independent Research, June-August, 2002.
Fellowships:
Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship
Martin Duberman Research Fellowship from the New York Public Library
Franklin Humanities Institute Dissertation Research Award
Andrew Mellon Award in Humanistic Studies
Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
Mellon Pre-doctoral Fellowship
Duke Endowment Fellowship
Duke University Women’s Studies Race and Gender Award
Northwestern University Performance Studies Travel Conference Grant
Publicly Active Graduate Education Fellowship (PAGE)
Duke Award for International Travel
Duke University Women’s Studies Conference Grant
Research Interests: Black feminist literary production, poetics and pedagogical practice, Critical
Black Diaspora Theory, Caribbean Women’s Literature, Queer Intergenerationality, Poetics of
Caribbean Revolution.
Dissertation:
“We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism.”
This dissertation looks at queer literary products that have been ignored or unavailable, such as
forgotten poems, unpublished letters to the editor, unfulfilled plans for publishing collectives and
lesson plans in order to create a pedagogical frame for the literary work of key black feminist writers
and theorists at the intersection of queer theory, critical black diaspora theory and black feminist
literary praxis. I assert that the teaching, publishing and poetics of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Barbara
Smith and Alexis De Veaux between 1968 and 1996 enact the threat of black maternity where the
epistemological danger of “bad teaching” offers a way of imagining different political possibilities.
These literary acts of teaching insist on the possibility of queer relationships between black subjects
across time and practice anti-imperialist relationships to space despite the rising neo-colonial order
that was emerging at the same time. The reflexive “mother ourselves” in dialogue with the pejorative
“your mama” recontexualizes black feminist print culture, classroom engagement and correspondence
as spaces in which a foreclosed future can be made present as it is learned and taught.
Dissertation sponsored by Maurice Wallace, Wahneema Lubiano, Fred Moten and Karla Holloway
Undergraduate Thesis:
"Home Broken/ Break Yourself: Confrontation, Collaboration and Movement in the Work of Kitchen Table Press
and Big Boots Zine Collective"
The thesis examines the formal literary strategies, publication processes and activist work of
Kitchen Table Press (1979-1995) and the Big Boots Zine Collective (2000-present). Informed by
Mikhail Bakhtin and Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, my reading of the poetry, polemics, formatting
and processes of each organization and their implications, concern the redefinition of “movement”
in response to the domestication of women of color in the second-wave feminist and cultural
nationalist “movements” of the late 20th Century and the Black Punk Rock and Riot Grrl
“movements” of the early 21st Century. I assert that Kitchen Table Press and Big Boots articulate
dialogically confrontational, yet collaboratively sustainable models of expression and action.
Thesis sponsored by Professors Farah Jasmine Griffin, Monica L. Miller, Thaddeus Russell
Paper Presentations:
“Mere Relative: Audre Lorde, Grenada and Black Feminist Solidarity.” Caribbean Studies
Association Conference, Kingston Jamaica, June, 2009.
“Flamboyance: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism.” Radical Intersections, Performance
Studies Northwestern University, May, 2009.
“Your Words Will Be There: Black Feminist Literary Critique as Spiritual Practice.” National
Council of Black Studies Conference, Atlanta, GA March 2009, (accepted, not presented due to
schedule conflict.)
“Sweets from the Sweet: Queer Black Language Production Across Generations.” Lavender
Languages Conference, American University, February, 2009.
“’...because the front is where we’re at’ The Danger of Black Youth during the US War on Poverty:
June Jordan and Children’s Books 1971-1981.” Modern Language Association, December 2008
(accepted not presented to scheduling conflict.)
“A Poetics of Revolution: Anguilla 1967-72,” Association of Caribbean Women Writers and
Scholars Conference, St. George’s University, Grenada, May, 2008.
“Always, Always: Breast Cancer and Black Queer Futures,” Race, Sex and Power Conference,
Chicago, April, 2008.
“A is for Assata: A Revolutionary Poetics,” Black Power/Black Feminism Conference, Sarah
Lawrence College, March, 2008
“Teaching Us Questions: Audre Lorde, June Jordan and Teaching Survival,” Annual AfricanAmerican Studies Conference, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, February, 2008.
“Sand so Fine It’s Air: Trauma and Accountability in Dionne Brand’s Inventory”, 2nd Annual Summit
on Spirituality and Immigration, Bennett College, April, 2007.
“(State) Violence Against Women in asha bandele’s Daughter” Rethinking Resistance Conference,
Emory University, March 2007.
“There’s No Word for Us: Trying Diaspora in Shange’s Liliane” First Annual Critical Race and
Literary Studies Conference: PRODUCTION, New York University, February, 2007.
“We All Want that but the World Doesn’t Love You”: A Queer Ethics of Diaspora in Dionne
Brand’s Thirsty Dartmouth Futures of American Studies Summer Institute, Dartmouth College,
June, 2006.
“Hip Hop Heart Stop: or Fixing Diaspora in Ayanah Moor’s Still” Mellon-Mays Fellowship
Conference, Barnard College, Columbia University, June 2006.
“Degealar Magalama: Queered Mothering and Diasporic Accountability in the Work of Dionne
Brand” 10th Annual Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars Conference,
Florida International University, June, 2006.
“Fixing Diaspora: in Dionne Brand’s No Language is Neutral Theorizing Diaspora Conference,
DePaul University, May 2006.
“Stillness in Diaspora” African Diaspora Conference, University of North Carolina-Charlotte,
April 2006
“Be Still and Know: A Poetics of Accountability and Action in the work of Natasha Tretheway”
Black Women’s Faith and Mental Health Conference, Bennett College, April, 2006
“Hello Risky: Interpellation, Recognition and HIV Outreach to Young Women who Sleep with
Women”, Risk and Breakdown Conference, Duke University, March 2006
“Hold Still: Fixing Diaspora in the Poetry of Dionne Brand” 25th Annual West Indian Literature
Conference, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, March 2006
“Live-Aspora: Creating a Queer and Dirty Response to HIV/AIDS through Anglophone Caribbean
Women’s Speculative Fiction”, Graduate Student Symposium on Gender and History,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, March 2005 (paper accepted, no funding available).
“Reverberation: A Grammar of Response to Biopolitical Occupation via the HIV/AIDS Epidemic”,
Institute for Critical U.S. Studies, Conference on the Atlantic and Global War, Duke
University, April 2005
“Type in Stereo: OutKast and the Queer Dialogics of the Music Video” Guest Lecture in
Undergraduate Literature Course, Duke University, April 2005.
“Queer Occupation of the Body (Politic): An Aesthetic of Undoing”, International Conference on
Somatechnics, Sydney Australia (paper accepted) and Graduate Student Conference of the
Romance Studies Department, Duke University, January 2005 (paper given).
“HomeBroken: Confrontation Collaboration and Movement in the Work of Kitchen table Press and
Big Boots Zine Collective”, American Studies Honors Thesis Presentation, Barnard College,
Columbia University, April 2004.
“A Dialogic Model for Breaking Yourself: Confrontation Collaboration and Movement in the Early
Work of Ntozake Shange”, Summer Research Opportunity Program Symposium, University of
California, Berkeley, August 2003
“Sharp Prism: Gwendolyn Brooks and a Strategy of Dialogic Refraction” Mellon-Mays
Undergraduate Fellowship New York Regional Conference, Barnard College, Columbia
University, April 2003.
Professional Service
Panelist: Pedagogy Forum: Duke University Department of English, March, 2007.
Moderator: Closing Plenary of the Sisterhood to Riot Grrl Symposium at the Sallie Bingham Center, Duke
University October, 2005
Panelist: The Graduate Student Experience: Duke University Minority Pre-Application Visitation November,
2005
Graduate Student Mentor: The Barnard College Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Summer Workshop
Panelist: Thriving in the First Year: Social Science Research Council’s Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellow Summer
Conference June, 2005
Publications:
Academic:
Book Chapters
“Dionne Brand: Stillness in Diaspora: Beyond the Exile Narrative.“ in Micheal Bucknor and Alison
Donnell ed. The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature, forthcoming.
“Discipline and Discipline: June Jordan, Audre Lorde and the Poetics of Teaching in Post-Civil
Rights New York, ” in Sunaina Maira and Piya Chatterjee ed. The Imperial University: Race, War and the
Nation-State, forthcoming.
“A Geography of Praise (for Nikky Finney)” in Marlon Moore and L.H. Stallings ed. Geechee to Gumbo
an Anthology on Black Southern Lesbians, forthcoming.
Journals
“The Black Feminine Domestic: A Counter-Hueristic Exercise in Falling Apart,” in (Un)Gendering the
Transatlantic: A Special Issue of Symbiosis, forthcoming.
“Survival Between the Lines: Michelle Cliff’s If I Could Write this In Fire“ in the Journal of
International Women’s Studies, forthcoming.
“Slavery is a Language: A Review of Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother.“ Obsidian, Special Issue on
Ghana, forthcoming.
“We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: A Dialogically Produced Audience and Black Feminist
Publishing 1979 to the “Present” in Gender Forum: Black Women’s Writing Revisited, 22(2008)
http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de/blackwomenswriting/article_gumbs.html.
“The Life of A Poem: Litany for Survival in Post-Lacrosse Durham” in Reflections: A Journal of
Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy Fall, 2008.
“Degalar Magalama: A Blue Airmail Letter”, Macommere: Journal of the Association of Caribbean Women
Writers and Scholars, Fall, 2007.
“Gendering Diaspora and Race-ing the Transnational: A Response,” Duke University Women’s Studies
Newsletter, Durham, NC: Duke University, Spring 2006.
“No Place Like...: On Living in a Small Brown Place or Self, Space and Universe(city)”, The Scholar
and the Feminist Online, New York, NY: Barnard Center for Research on Women, Issue 3.2, Winter
2005
Encyclopedia:
Entry for Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters in Facts on File, forthcoming.
Entries for “Alexis De Veaux”, “June Jordan”, “Cheryl Clarke”, “Zelda Lockhart” and “Pat Parker”
in The Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Literature, forthcoming.
Entries for “Audre Lorde”, “June Jordan”, “Cheryl Clarke” and “Combahee River Collective” in
LGBTQ America Today Encyclopedia, Spring 2009, Greenwood Press.
Public Scholarship:
Book Chapters
“Freedom Seeds: Growing Abolition in Durham, NC” in Abolition Now!: Ten Years of Organizing
Against the Prison Industrial Complex. Oakland: AK Press, 2008.
Magazines:
Editorial Work
(selected)
Co-editor: “Because We Still Are Here: Solidarity with Palestine Past and Present” Make/Shift
Magazine
Editor: “What You Started: Letters to Black Feminist Ancestors” Make/Shift Magazine
Spring/Summer 2009, 24-26.
Editor: “Without You Who Understand: Letters from Radical Women of Color” Make/Shift Magazine
Fall/Winter 2008, 31-35.
“Two or Three Things: A Queer Poetics of Knowing” The Charis Review, Vol. 1 Issue 1. August 2008,
4-5.
Editor: “This Instant and this Triumph: Women of Color Publishing” a special issue of American
Book Review, Vol. 29 No. 4, May/June 2008. (author of the essay “This Instant and this Triumph:
Women of Color Publishing” 4-5)
Co-editor: “Collective Soul: Religion and the Left” in Left Turn Magazine, Jan/Feb 2008 16-33.
(Co author of the articles: “Bloom: Homegrown Spiritual Movement” 19-23
“Hardship and Joy: Muslim Organizing in North Carolina” 24-27.)
Magazines Continued
Writing
“Gospel (a review)” Mosaic, Summer 2009.
“Forget Hallmark: Why Mother’s Day is a Queer Black Feminist Thing.” New Black Magazine, May
2009.
“Just Us: Transforming Justice by Building Communities.” Left Turn Magazine April/May 2008, 41-45.
“Building a Queer Left” Left Turn Magazine Oct/Nov 2007, 45-47.
“But Some of Us are Brazen: Lust for a Black Queer Community” Treazure Magazine, September
2007.
“Document: UBUNTU Women of Color-Led Coalition Against Sexual Assault” in Make/Shift
Magazine, Fall 2007.
“Witness: An Update on the National Day of Truthtelling” in SisterPages, Newsletter of the National
Network of Women of Color Ending Violence Against Women, Summer 2007.
“Unconditional (A Lovenote with Footnotes): On the National Day of Truthtelling” in Left Turn
Magazine, Summer 2007.
“Improvising Peace in a Moment After Faith: Me’shell Ndgeocello’s Jamia: Dance of the Infidel, The
Coup Magazine, New York, NY: thecoupmagazine.com, Issue 1.1., Summer 2006.
“This is Love: Me’shell Ndegeocello or Embracing Outer Space in a State of Emergency” Brownstone,
New York: Washington Square Press, November 2004.
Creative:
Does Your Mama Know: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories (Revised Edition), ed. Lisa Moore,
Washington DC: Redbone Press, 2009.
Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces, ed. Michelle Sewell, Washington DC:
Girlchild Press, 2006.
Leaving Home Becoming Home: Girls and Women Write About the Search for Self, ed. Linda Bryant, Atlanta,
GA: InnerLight Publishing, 2005.
FOUND; SweetBrokenBeautiful, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, New York, NY: BrokenBeautiful Press, 2004.
Brownsweet Brokenbeautiful: In Praise of Black Women, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, New York, NY:
BrokenBeautiful Press, 2004.
Impossible, Perfect, Bruised: Love Notes to a Waking Nation, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, New York, NY:
BrokenBeautiful Press, 2002.
Lovespill, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, New York, NY: BrokenBeautiful Press, 2002.
Teaching Experience:
Feminist Theory Spring 2009 an upper level women’s studies course, this course used published
and unpublished letters by feminists as way to introduce women’s studies students to the practice of
theory, questions of audience and their own archival research. Each student created an original
analysis of archival letters in conversation with published “open” letters on the issue of feminism. As
a group the students created an online publications and in three groups they created zines dedicated
to feminist thinkers June Jordan, Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzaldua.
“Letters to Audre” Spring 2008 This special course designed to supplement the critical and creative
writing skills of Africana Women’s Studies majors at Bennett College specifically focused on the
poetry and essay of black feminist lesbian professor, librarian and publisher Audre Lorde. The
students wrote their own versions of key works by Lorde in each genre, activating their own critical
readings of their work and addressing issues important to them in the contemporary moment. The
student work is document online (www.letterstoaudre.wordpress.com)
“To Be A Problem: The Figure of the Outcast in Black Literature” Fall 2007 an “Introduction
to the English Major” seminar incorporating multi-media works on outcast status in black literature
(starting with DuBois, ending with Aaron McGruder) and including collaborative independent
publications made by students.
“Trauma, Violence and Women’s Writing” Spring 2006 (co-taught with Charlotte Pierce-Baker)A writing intensive upper-level course cross-listed in Women’s Studies and English, focusing on
literature and academic analyses of violence as experienced, represented and responded to by women.
“Black Writers in the Americas” Fall 2005 (co-taught with Houston Baker)- A writing intensive
introductory seminar focusing on literature in English by black writers in the United States and the
Caribbean, with an economic, cultural and gender analysis.
Languages:
Fluency in English and proficiency in Spanish;
Reading knowledge of Italian, French and Portuguese
Academic Organization Membership:
Modern Language Association
Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars
Society of Duke Fellows, Duke University
Hurston-James Society for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Duke University
Women’s Studies Graduate Colloquium
Atlantic Global War Working Group, Institute of Critical U.S. Studies
Race, Place and Power: the Making and Unmaking of Freedoms in the Atlantic World
Current Community Leadership Positions:
International Black Youth Summit (Steering Committee, Planning Committee, Lead Facilitator)
SpiritHouse (Youth Programming Facilitator)
North Carolina Youth Lambda Network (director of action-through-arts programming)
UBUNTU: (Artistic Response and Educational Dialogue Committees)
References:
Karla Holloway, William Randall Kenan Professor of English and African American Studies, Duke
University
Maurice Wallace, Associate Professor of English and African and African American Studies, Duke
University
Ian Baucom, Professor of English and Literature, Duke University
Houston Baker, Professor Emeritus of English and African American Studies, Vanderbilt
University
Farah Jasmine Griffin, Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies, and
Professor of English, Columbia University
Monica Miller, Assistant Professor of English, Barnard College, Columbia University
To request references, please email [email protected] .