Simone A. James Alexander is Professor of English, Africana Studies and Women and Gender Studies and Director of Africana Studies at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, where she teaches and researches in the areas of Postcolonial literature, African American literature, African literature, Caribbean literature, Russian literature, American Literature and women writers. She was the immediate past Chair of the Department of Africana Studies.
Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Dr. Alexander attended Rosignol Primary School and New Amsterdam Multilateral High School, before taking Spanish at University of Guyana for a year. She then headed to Moscow, Russia.
Alexander received her Ph.D. and an M.A. from Rutgers University (New Brunswick) in the Department of Comparative Literature. She received a second master’s degree from the Department of Russian Language and Literature at the University Druzby Narodof (Moscow, Russia). Her articles have appeared in African American Review, Anglistica, New Mango Season: A Journal of Caribbean Women’s Writing, Revista Review InterAmericana, African Literature Association Bulletin, and edited collections. Professor Alexander is author of the award-winning book African Diasporic Women’s Narratives: Politics of Resistance, Survival and Citizenship (University of Florida Press, 2014).
In addition to being the recipient of the 2015 College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award, African Diasporic Women’s Narratives received honorary mention by the African Literature Association Book of the Year Scholarship Award (2016). Due to its success, the book was reprinted in paperback in May 2016. Professor Alexander was named Researcher of the Year by the College of Arts and Sciences at Seton Hall University (2016). Professor Alexander is also the author of Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women (University of Missouri Press, 2001) and co-editor of Feminist & Critical Perspectives on Caribbean Mothering (Africa World Press, 2013). Dr. Alexander is a three-time recipient of the Global Scholar Award at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She also served as Mentor at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton.
Professor Alexander’s current projects include Black Freedom in (Communist) Russia: Great Expectations, Utopian Visions and Bodies of (In)Difference: Gender, Sexuality, and Nationhood.