Christel N. Temple

Professor

Christel N. Temple is Professor of Africana Studies and an affiliate of The Graduate Program for Cultural Studies (CLST), the Critical European Culture Studies doctoral program (CED), and the African Studies Program (ASP). Professor Temple received her B.A. from the College of William and Mary, where she majored in History, her M.A. in Comparative Black Literature from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and her Ph.D. in African American Studies from Temple University. Her major fields of interest are Africana Cultural Memory Studies, Comparative Africana Literature, Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Afroeuropean Studies. She has published widely on issues of Diaspora cultural theory and Africana literary history and criticism.

Temple is the author of Black Cultural Mythology (SUNY, 2020), Transcendence and the Africana Literary Enterprise (Lexington, 2017), Literary Spaces: Introduction to Comparative Black Literature (Carolina Academic Press, 2007), and Literary Pan-Africanism: History, Contexts, and Criticism (Carolina Academic Press, 2005). She has a forthcoming collection on Muhammad Ali in Africana Cultural Memory (Anthem, 2021) co-edited with James L. Conyers, Jr. In addition, Dr. Temple is Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Black Studies.

Temple’s essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in Journal of Black Studies, CLA Journal, Nations and Nationalism, SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, International Journal of Black Studies, Journal of African American Studies, Western Journal of Black Studies, Journal of Pan African Studies, Africalogical Perspectives, and African Studies Quarterly. Currently, she is Series Editor for the Critical Africana Studies book series with Lexington Books. She served a term as Department Chair from 2016 to 2019 and is a former Executive Director of the Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement (DISA) that convenes the annual Cheikh Anta Diop International Conference in Philadelphia.