Chinua Thelwell

Chinua Akimaro Thelwell Associate Professor, History and Africana Studies Office: Blair 354 Email: cathelwell@wm.edu Regional Areas of Research: Ancient to Modern Africa, United States Thematic Areas of Research: African American, Comparative and Transnational, Cultural/Intellectual, Diaspora and Migration, Popular Culture and Media, Race and Ethnicity

Background Dr. Chinua Akimaro Thelwell received his PhD from the American Studies Program at New York University in 2011. As a result of his interdisciplinary training, and moments of experiential learning outside of classroom settings, Thelwell has developed a wide range of teaching and research interests. These interests include: Afro-diasporic history, history of the idea of race, blackface minstrelsy as a popular culture export, performance studies, post-colonial hybridity theory, Asian American history, and hip-hop studies.

Research & Publication His research focuses on performance as hegemonic and counter-hegemonic race discourse. His first book, an edited collection titled Theater and Cultural Politics for a New World, was published by Routledge in 2016. His second book, a monograph titled Exporting Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in South Africa and Beyond, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in Spring 2020. His writing appears in The Drama Review, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, Miami Herald, and African American Culture: An Encyclopedia of People, Traditions, and CustomsDr. Thelwell is the recipient of a distinguished graduate student teaching award from New York University, an Emerging Diversity Scholar Award from the National Center for Institutional Diversity at University of Michigan, a pre-doctoral fellowship from Allegheny College, post-doctoral fellowship from the Ford Foundation, and a post-doctoral fellowship from the Mellon Foundation. In 2011, Dr. Thelwell and a number of collaborators, most notably the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, received a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation to begin work on Theater and Cultural Politics for a New World.