Elisa Joy White is an Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies, Black European Studies, New Diaspora Communities, New Media Studies at University of California, Davis. She completed a PhD in African Diaspora Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where she also received a MA in African American Studies. She also holds a MA in Media Studies from the New School University and a BA in Theatre from Spelman College. Her research interests and publications include lesser-examined African Diaspora sites, Black European Studies, the social and cultural dimensions of globalization (transnational, cosmopolitan and new diaspora communities), the construction of racial and ethnic identities, and new media studies. She recently spent the Spring 2012 semester in Spain where she served as the Resident Director for the UH Manoa study abroad program in Seville. While in Spain, she taught courses on African Diaspora Communities in Spain and Immigration, Human Rights, and Justice in Spain. Dr. White’s book, Modernity, Freedom and the African Diaspora: Dublin, New Orleans, Paris(link is external), was recently published by Indiana University Press (2012).
Research
Black European Studies; lesser-examined African Diaspora sites; cultural and social dimensions of globalization (including transnational, diaspora and cosmopolitan communities); human rights and immigration; construction of racial and ethnic identities; new media studies (representations and formations of ethnic communities, national identities, and transnational cultures via new technologies)
Publications
Book
(2012) Modernity, Freedom and the African Diaspora: Dublin, New Orleans, Paris. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Book Chapters
Forthcoming (2013) “The Unacceptable Local: Positioning African Diaspora and Black Identity in Contemporary Hawai‘i” in They Followed the Trade Winds: African Americans in Hawai’i (2nd Edition), Miles M. Jackson (ed), University of Hawai‘i Press.
Forthcoming (2013) “Representations of Blackness and the Popolo Problematic in Hawai‘i” in They Followed the Trade Winds: African Americans in Hawai’i (2nd Edition), Miles M. Jackson (ed), University of Hawai‘i Press.
(2010) “A Conversation with Stephen Small” in Forty and Counting: An Anthology Commemorating Four Decades of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Charles P. Henry and Ronald Williams II (eds), Berkeley: UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies.
(2009) “Paradoxes of Diaspora, Global Identity and Human Rights: The Deportation of Nigerians in Ireland” in African Diaspora and the Metropolis: Reading the African, African American and Caribbean Experience, Fassil Demissie (ed) London and New York: Routledge
(2007) “Asserting Difference: An Examination of Modes in which the Internet is used to Challenge Monolithic Blackness” in AfroGeeks: Beyond the Digital Divide. UC Santa Barbara: Center for Black Studies, UC Santa Barbara.
(2002) “The New Irish Storytelling: Media, Representations and Racialized Identities” in Racism and Anti-Racism in Ireland, Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh (eds) Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications.
