TOYA MARY OKONKWO PH.D. ENGLISH LITERATURE
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Toya Mary Okonkwo
Ph.D. English

As a well-wisher of humanity, I utilize the creative impulses of imagination as resistance to enact an ethos arts education as central to advancing vibrant individual and collective changes that contribute to an ever-advancing civilization. Recently, I earned my Ph.D. of English and had the distinction of being the first Black woman to graduate in the history of that program. Over the years, I have taught at Purdue, TCU, Paul Quinn College, and UNT.
In my dissertation, entitled OUR REAL LIFE PECOLAS AND OGUU CHASES THE SUN - FROM COLLAPSING STARS TO QUASARS: A COSMIC PLAY IN THREE ACTS & TWO INTERLUDES ON THE IMPORTANCE OF IGBO STORYTELLING IN EXPANDING BLACK GIRLHOOD IMAGINATIONS AS RESISTANCE TO SOCIAL ERASURE IN STOP SIX, TX., I blended the creative power of performance and visual storytelling to explore the subjects of #blackgirlmagic as it relates to astrophysics and the neurobiology of transcending the confines of trauma.
In my most ardent dreams, my dissertation, along with my M.A. thesis, A Handful of Gardenias: Short Stories from My Grandmother, Mary "May" Katherine McKenzie, will be realized for audiences to experience and thereby take the reins of their own journeys towards becoming well-wishers of humanity and lovers of the beauty of our essential oneness. I am also an active volunteer with the Baha'i community and collect honey native to the lands in which I travel (it makes the best tea!).

My interests include being a fabulous scholar and teacher of African American studies at the university and college education level. 
This website take you through the major projects I have completed in my academic journey. You will find my C.V., Teaching Philosophy (and inspiration), Research Statement, Dissertation Page, Syllabi for Literature, Writing, and Humanities courses, Pedagogy Presentation,and Inquiry Project. Enjoy the tour!
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MY C.V.

EDUCATION

​MAY 2021                           
Texas Christian University                Fort Worth, Texas 
Ph.D. English           
 
AUG 2016                   
VHS Language School                  Berlin, Germany
German CERF Certificate
 
MAY 2015                     
Midwestern State University      Wichita Falls, Texas
M.A. English
 
MAY 2009                 
​Midwestern State University      Wichita Falls, Texas
B.A. Theatre & Humanities w/ English Concentration 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

RESEARCH PROJECTS

BLACK GIRLHOOD STUDIES; MAGICAL REALISM; BLACK RADICAL IMAGINATION; VISUAL CULTURE AND NARRATIVE; CREATIVE AS METHODOLOGY; AFRO-FUTURISM; AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE; BLACK WOMEN WRITERS; ART IN LITERATURE; DRAMA & THEATRE; (NEO)/SLAVE NARRATIVES; GLOBAL & WORLD LITERATURES; TRANSATLANTIC STUDIES
MASTERS THESIS
A Handful of Gardenias: Short Stories from My Grandmother, Mary "May" Katherine McKenzie

SEMINAR PAPERS

Stop Six Heritage Day: An Interactive PDF to Honor the Rich Heritage of This Fort Worth Community

On Womanism: The Black Women’s Club Movement, Antebellum Resistance, and a Sundance Luncheon

Fixing the Voice in God’s Trombones

Majnun and Romeo, Layli and Juliet: Examining Star-Crossed Lovers in a Global Context
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Beyonce’s Lemonade as a Neo-Slave Narrative and Nola as a City of the Dead
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Publications

SPRING  2023  
[Taller] Electric Marronage
ONLINE BLOG
"Valentine's Day:" A Short Story About Black Girlhood

SPRING  2020  
Dark Laboratory
Virtual Exhibition
“Oguu Chases the Sun” – Photo Essay"

SPRING  2020  
Black Language Syllabus
Homework - Black Rhetoric
From Maria Stewart to Ida B. Wells – Black Women’s Public Presentations of Protection

SUMMER  2018  
Studies in the Novel 
Book Review 
Precarious Passages: The Diasporic Imagination in Contemporary Black Anglophone Fiction by Tuire Valkeakari
 
JULY  2016 
KUNSTASYL/Museum Europäischer Kulturen Editor 
"daHEIM: Einsichten in flüchtige Leben: Myth of Gilgamesh Seeking Europa"
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Presentations


January 2023 - BAHA'I INSPIRED KAWNZA CONFERENCE - Online
"We Quasars: Black Girl Luminaries of the Universe"
I  presented on the theory of being born of the cosmos, light, and stardust, and thus turning to it as a guide in times of chaos. Using Kuumba (creativity) & Imani (faith) as inspiration for discussing the importance of Black girlhood stories and their ability to transcend the origins of trauma that inform so much of how Black girls move through personal and social spaces.
November 2022 - BLACK & NATIVE UNITY CONFERENCE - Online
"Honoring Black Girl Stories: Becoming Quasars"
I presented on the vitalizing influence of creative arts on overcoming trauma and how using imagination as resistance can be a tool to combat social erasure.  

May 2021 - THE GREATEST INDOOR READING SERIES - Online
"Real Life Pecolas Speaking from the Margins: Black Holes to Quasars"
I presented a dramatic reading excerpt from my dissertation in this series. 

January 2021 - THE BLUEST EYE @50 SYMPOSIUM - Online
"Teaching Toni Morrison and The Bluest Eye: An Open Conversation"
I gave a pedagogical presentation on teaching The Bluest Eye as a fairy tale and finding the real life Pecolas that are part of the communities in which we teach.   

October 2020 -  C19:"DISSENT" - Online
"A New Poetic of Resistance: Looking Beyond Authenticity in Mary Prince's Narrative - Black Girlhood and German Archives"
I was part of a panel on Mary Prince, and my paper examined how retaining her humanity, personality, and individuality is the site of dissent and confronts the ideology of slavery in Prince’s life. I used Black girlhood articles to bring attention to the erasure of Black girlhood having roots in the enslavement of so many – and how the physical body of Prince is a site of dissent. I also brought in archival research of enslaved peoples Baptism records that I found at a Moravian Church archive is Herrnhut, Germany.

March 2019 - MELUS CONFERENCE - Cincinnati, OH
"Toni Morrison and Kara Walker's Five Poems: Tracing Fantastic Roots Mythology of Prometheus and Lineage of Eve"
The Multi-Ethnic Literature of the US annual conference, I presented this paper as part of a panel on Literary Afterlives of Slavery. I examined the little-known collaboration of Morrison and Walker’s project, tracing roots of their project to black Prometheus and Mitochondrial Eve.
 
October 2018 - REP CONFERENCE - Austin, TX
"Seeing Oneself in the Professoriate: Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Academic Faculty (Europe and the U.S.)"Poster presentation, at the Race, Ethnicity, and Place conference, on primary research conducted at universities in England, Belgium, and Germany on how changing racial demographics in the European population are not being reflected in the professors at many universities, even universities where the racial demographics of the student population has shifted.
May 2018 - HOTCUS CONFERENCE - Cambridge, United Kingdom
"On Womanism: The Black Women's Club Movement, Antebellum Resistance, and a Sundance Luncheon"
Panel presentation, at the Historians of the Twentieth Century U.S. conference, on my research into a Fort Worth, TX branch of Black Women’s Clubs. I connected the Black Women’s Club movement to a lineage of black female resistance that began during the antebellum period, while bringing the same issues to a recent example of black women’s resistance in contemporary spaces (the Sundance luncheon).  

MAY 2017 -  SPACES OF CONFRONTATION -  Boston, MA
“Another Black Atlantic: Sites of Confrontation in Mary Prince”
• The III International Conference in Transatlantic Studies, I presented my paper on Mary Prince at the invitation of the Real Colegio Compultense at Harvard University.
 
OCTOBER 2016 
TCU Women and Gender Studies- Fall Symposium - Fort Worth, TX
“Love and Courage in a Time of Oppression”
• Pecha Kucha style presentation on Táhirih, a 19th century Persian feminist and poet.
 
APRIL 2014 
Texas Tech University Annual Women’s Conference Lubbock, TX
“Amazons Among Us”
• Panel presentation titled, “Amazons Among Us: Exploring the Contributions of Women in the Fields of Global Feminism, Neurofemism, and Feminist Pop-Culture.” We each chose women to represent Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s definition of an “Amazon” from her book Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History.
 
APRIL 2009 
Sigma Tau Delta International -Convention,  Minneapolis, MN
“Role of Women in The Wife’s Lament” and “My Parents: From Honduras, Nigeria, and Wichita Falls, Texas”
• Presented my research paper in the British Literature: Early British Women category about the Old English poem’s unique female perspective and how the presented voice is possibly symbolic interpretation about the exile of the Norse goddess Freya from Anglo-Saxon culture, after their introduction to a male-centered Christian faith. Also presented a creative nonfiction piece.
 
APRIL 2008 
Sigma Tau Delta International Convention - Louisville, KY
“Logical Nonsense: A Collection of Poems”
• Presented a series of three free verse poems about my life experiences.
 
APRIL 2007 
Sigma Tau Delta International Convention - Pittsburgh, PA
“Like Nothing I Ever Knew Before” and “A Progression of Thought”
• Presented Creative Nonfiction and Poetry pieces about the realty of dreams and my travels to Guadalajara, Mexico and Havana, Cuba. ​

Teaching Experience 

AUG 2021 - MAY 2022
Purdue University
Visiting Lecturer - Transformative Texts: Antiquity to Modernity (Magical Realism)

AUG 2018 - Present

Paul Quinn College
Adjunct Professor - Black American Literature; World Literature; Black American Lit. & Film; Composition I & II

AUG 2017 - DEC 2020                
Texas Christian University   
Graduate Instructor – Intro to Drama, Imagination as Resistance; Writing as Inquiry
 
JAN 2014 – JUL 2014                              
Midwestern State University             
Intensive English Language Instructor
 
AUG 2013 – MAY 2014                         
Midwestern State University                   
Writing Tutor
 
AUG 2009 – FEB 2010     
La Escuela El Alba  - Siguatepeque, Honduras
Primary and Secondary Earth & Life Sciences Teacher

Service 

AWARDS: TCU GO Ambassador; TCU University Fellowship; MSU Graduate Scholarship; Emergency Dentist USA Scholarship; Sealed Air Corp. Scholarship; MSU Bourland Hawley Scholarship

LEADERSHIP: TCU Long 20th Century American Literature Graduate Reading Group; TCU African Student Association; 2017 PIP Talks Judge; TCU CRES Grad Student Association; Chair MSU M.A. Thesis Handbook Committee; President/Community-Chair MSU Sigma Tau Delta; President - Hirschi Class of 2004 Alumni Association; Facilitator Dallas Bahá'í Youth Conference; Little Free Library Volunteer; Community Service Chair- Alpha Psi Omega

International Experience

Berlin, Bonn, & Schifferstadt, Germany – English Tutor & Magazine and Website Editor (2014-2016)

​Haifa, Israel – Religious Volunteer at Baha'i World Center (2010-2012)

Siguatepeque, Honduras – Science Teacher (2009-2010)

London, UK – Study Abraod (2008)

Havana, Cuba – Religious & Cultural Exchange with One World Dance Group (2007)

Guadalajara, Veracruz, and San Luis Potosi Mexico – Cultural Exchange Trips (2000-2004)

References

Dr. Stacie McCormick
Assistant Professor at TCU
s.mccormick@tcu.edu
817-257-6245


Dr. Sarah Robbins
Lorraine Shirley Professor of Literature at TCU
s.robbins@tcu.edu
817-257-5146


Dr. Kristen Garrison
Assoc. VP, Undergraduate Education & Assessment
kristen.garrison@mwsu.edu
940-397-6305




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