Curriculum Vitae

Amadi I. Ozier

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Literatures in English, Rutgers University—New Brunswick (2022).

M.A. in Literatures in English, Rutgers University—New Brunswick (2018).

B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing, University of West Georgia, Honors College (2013).

Dissertation Title: Senses of Humor: Joking Etiquette in African American Literature.

Name of Supervisor: Dr. Douglas A. Jones; Committee Members: Dr. Erica R. Edwards, Dr. Maurice Wallace.

FACULTY POSITIONS

2022 - Present University of Wisconsin, Madison

Department of English

Assistant Professor

ADDITIONAL POSITIONS

2018 - 2019 Teaching assistant to Professor Cheryl A. Wall

Department of English, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Harlem Renaissance (ENGL 358:376); The African-American Essay; Black Novel; Toni Morrison

2017 - 2018 Research assistant to Professor Douglas A. Jones

For “Slavery’s Reinventions” Special Issue, Modern Drama, Winter 2019

2017 - 2020 Research assistant to Professors Meredith McGill and Jacqueline Goldsby

Black Bibliography Project, Rutgers University and Yale University

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

American Humor Studies Association (AHSA)

Modern Language Association (MLA)

Modernist Studies Association (MSA)

National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins Society

Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

HONORS, GRANTS, AND AWARDS

2024

2024-25 Schomburg Fellowship, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library ($35,000)

2023

Fall Research Competition, UW-Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research ($14,631)

Community-Based Learning Course Development Grant, Morgridge Center for Public Service ($3,350)

2022

2022 Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence (MTLE) Fellow, UW Madison

NYC Narrative Power Network for Health Equity and Racial Justice Project Grant, New York City Department of Health ($20,000)

Dickens Universe Travel Grant, Rutgers University ($1,000)

2021

Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship ($28,000)

Emory University James Weldon Johnson Dissertation Fellowship for Pre-Doctoral Scholars (declined) ($25,000)

Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Rutgers University (declined) ($28,000)

Committee for Bias Awareness and Prevention Antiracist Initiative Fund ($1,000)

Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis 2021 Graduate Fellowship (“Life and Death”) ($2,000)

2020

Graduate Scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta ($3,500)

Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship ($23,000)

Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis 2020 Graduate Fellowship (“Life and Death”) ($2,000)

School of Graduate Studies Emergency Research Funding ($1,500)

Rutgers Graduate Student Association Excellence in Graduate Advocacy Award (honorable mention)

Graduate Student Association 2019-2020 Event of the Year for “Murder! At Murray Hall! A Benefit for Emergency Relief in Australia and Puerto Rico” (honorable mention)

2019

Visiting Graduate Student Fellowship, Beinecke Library at Yale University ($3,000)

William C. Johnson Distinguished Scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta

Edwin L. Stockton Graduate Scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta (declined) ($4,000)

Raritan Fellowship, Rutgers University ($23,000)

SGS Off-Campus Dissertation Development Award, Rutgers University ($2,000)

English Department Conference Travel Award, Rutgers University ($900)

2018

Edwin L. Stockton Graduate Scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta ($4,000)

Constance Rourke Travel Grant, American Humor Studies Association ($250)

English Department Conference Travel Award, Rutgers University ($500)

English Department Graduate Student Symposium Essay Award, Rutgers University ($200)

Dean’s Office Conference Travel Award, Rutgers University ($300)

School of Graduate Studies Professional Development Fund Summer Research Grant, Rutgers University ($900)

2017

SAS-Mellon Summer Research Grant, Rutgers University ($4,000)

School of Graduate Studies Professional Development Fund Summer Research Grant, Rutgers University ($900)

Dean’s Office Conference Travel Award, Rutgers University ($300)

School of Graduate Studies Professional Development Fund Summer Research Grant, Rutgers University ($900)

English Department Graduate Student Symposium Essay Award, Rutgers University ($200)

2016

Edwin L. Stockton Graduate Scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta ($4,000)

Marius Bewley Prize for Best Essay in Coursework, Rutgers University (honorable mention)

English Department Graduate Student Symposium Essay Award, Rutgers University ($200)

English Department Summer Research Stipend, Rutgers University ($5,000)

2014

Robert L. Snyder Award, University of West Georgia ($2,500)

2013

Summer Travel Grant for Academic Scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta ($3,000)

Honors College Outstanding Senior Award, University of West Georgia

Best Fiction Prize, Eclectic Literary Magazine ($250)

Honors College Outstanding Senior Award

Best Fiction Prize, Eclectic Literary Magazine ($250)

Center for Diversity and Inclusion Mentor Achievement Program (MAP) Award

2012

Ben W. Griffith Fiction Prize ($1,500)

Willie Maude Thompson English Scholarship ($1,500)

Center for Diversity and Inclusion MAP Mentor Award

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Articles and contributions to edited volumes and handbooks.

“Lynching Modernism: Ulysses, America, and the Negro Minstrel Abroad.” Modernism/modernity. March 2024 (also the featured article on journal’s website). [P]

“Theater and Performance in the 19th Century,” Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies, February 2020. 10.1093/OBO/9780190280024-0091

Book reviews.

“African American Literature in Transition, 1750-1800, edited by Rhondda Robinson Thomas.” Early American Literature, Volume 59, Number 3, 2024, pp. 688-696. 10.1353/eal.2024.a940230 https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/12/article/940230/pdf

“This Body Still Has Time: Jermaine Singleton’s Cultural Melancholy: Readings of Race, Impossible Mourning, and African American Ritual.” Social Text, 2017. https://socialtextjournal.org/this-body-still-has-time-jermaine-singletons-cultural-melancholy-readings-of-race-impossible-mourning-and-african-american-ritual/

Other selected publications.

“How to Stage a Rally: A People’s Field Guide.” Crown Heights C.A.R.E. Collective, Brooklyn, NY, 2023.

“Report from Madison Tenant Power.” Tenant Voice, vol. 1, no. 3, winter 2024.

Work in progress.

Book. Humor Among Uppity Negroes at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A Literary Study.

Book chapter. “Ernest Hogan and the Ironic Bourgeois Fantasy of Black-on-Black Face.” Oxford Handbook of African American Humor Studies (under contract).

LECTURES, SCHOLARLY PAPERS, AND CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION

Papers presented.

“You Cannot Evict a Movement: Tenant Fights That Catalyze, Mobilize, and Win.” Socialism Conference. Chicago, IL. July 3-6, 2025.

“Canned Laughter and the Attention Economy.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference. Virtual. May 30-31, 2025.

“Lynching: Irony as Proof.” Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS). Los Angeles, CA. April 3-6, 2025.

“Black Women’s Squat Logics.” 2025 Urban Research-Based Action Network Conference, Providence, RI. April 3-6, 2025.

“Nella Larsen’s Maternal Instincts.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, LA, January 9-12, 2025.

“Squat Logic in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” National Women’s Studies Annual Conference, Detroit, MI, November 14-17, 2024.

“Re-Homing the New Negro in Japan.” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Chicago, IL, November 7-10, 2024.

“Lynching Modernism: Ulysses, America, and the Negro Minstrel Abroad.” XXIX International James Joyce Symposium, Glasgow, Scotland, June 14-19, 2024.

“Neighborhood Crisis Response: Case Study from Park Place.” With the Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU) and Eugene Housing and Neighbor Defense (HAND). Autonomous Tenant Union Network Convention, virtual, March 2-3, 2024.

“Black Extinction and Eternal Life: Pauline Hopkins and Robert Gilbert Wells.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Philadelphia, PA, January 4-7, 2024.

“Solidarity, Fake Laughter, and the Attention Monopoly.” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Brooklyn, NY, October 26-29, 2023.

“James Weldon Johnson and the New Negro in Japan.” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Brooklyn, NY, October 26-29, 2023.

“The Teaching Archive: A New History for Literary Study in conversation with Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan.” Graduate Office Speaker Series, Rutgers University, April 14, 2022.

“Infectious Laughter and the Science of Racial Transmigration.” Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis Speaker Series, New Brunswick, NJ, March 29, 2022.

“Infectious Laughter and the Science of Racial Transmigration.” 2021 Ford Fellows’ Conference, convened virtually, October 8-9, 2021.

“Ida B. Wells’s Lynching Joke: Irony as a Blueprint for Negro Reading,” Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis Speaker Series, New Brunswick, NJ, November 24, 2020.

“Just Us: An American Conversation” in conversation with Claudia Rankine. Rutgers Writers House, October 14, 2020.

“Creative Thinking in Times of Crisis” in conversation with Frank Wilderson III. Rutgers Writers House, October 5, 2020.

“Pauline Hopkins and Racial Transmigration.” Conference of the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, New Orleans, LA, April 2-5, 2020. (Canceled due to COVID-19.)

“Roundtable: Gloria Naylor and Her Archives, Modern and Medieval.” Rutgers University Medieval/Renaissance Colloquium, January 31, 2020.

“At the Hands of Parties Unknown: Lynching and its Pretenses.” National Women’s Studies Association, San Francisco, CA, November 14-17, 2019.

“The Negro Minstrel in the Caribbean Imagination.” Modernist Studies Association, Toronto, ON, October 17-20, 2019.

“Richard Pryor’s White Body.” Humor in America 2018, Joint Convention of the American Humor Studies Association and the Mark Twain Circle of America, Chicago, IL, July 12-15, 2018.

“Racial Transmigration in Pauline Hopkins’s Of One Blood.” American Literary Association, San Francisco, CA, May 24-27, 2018.

“All For a Pretty Face: Thomas ‘Daddy’ Rice’s Minstrel Desires.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Pittsburgh, PA, April 12-15, 2018.

“Le Beauté Sauvage in Humboldt’s Personal Narrative.” Annual Meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth Century Studies, Orlando, FL, March 22-25, 2018.

“The Mammy and the Colored Nurse in the Writings of Booker T. Washington and Charles W. Chesnutt.” Center for Race and Ethnicity Annual Graduate Forum on Race and Ethnicity, Rutgers University, February 24, 2017.

“Church of Sex: Walt Whitman and the Beat Generation.” National Conference of Undergraduate Research, Weber State University, Ogden, UT, March 29-31, 2012.

Conference and panel organization.

“Black Cultural Failure and Political (Dis)Organization.” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Brooklyn, NY, October 26-29, 2023.

“The Politics of Unknowing.” National Women’s Studies Association, San Francisco, CA, November 14-17, 2019.

“Humor and Violence in the African-American Imagination.” NeMLA Annual Convention, Pittsburgh, PA, April 12-15, 2018.

“Animating Blackness.” NeMLA Annual Convention, Washington, DC, March 21-24, 2019.

“Slavery’s Reinventions.” The Drama Review. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, March 30, 2018.

“Black Poetics: The Afterlife of Slavery and the Place of Nature.” Symposium on Slavery in the African-American Imagination, Rutgers University, December 7, 2016.

OTHER INSTRUCTIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Invited institutional talks.

“Anti-Semitism and Blackface America as Metaphor in James Joyce’s Ulysses.” James Joyce Society. May 1, 2025.

“How the war on Gaza has re-shaped campus policies nationwide.” Humanities NOW: Dissent on Campus (panel). UW-Madison Center for the Humanities. February 13, 2025.

“Abolitionist Alternatives to Prison and Policing in NYC,” NYU National Lawyers’ Guild, New York University, New York, NY, March 21, 2023.

“Fairview’s Conversations.” Department of English, Smith College, Northampton, MA, November 10, 2021.

“Ida B. Wells and White Lies.” Department of Journalism, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, September 23, 2021.

“Ida B. Wells and the Makings of Modern Journalism.” Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Metro-Atlanta Chapter, April 24, 2021.

Invited community talks.

“Neighborhood-based Organizing.” NYC City-Wide Tenant Assembly. New York, NY. May 4, 2025.

“Prison and the Climate Crisis.” NYC Jail Support. Brooklyn, NY. April 11, 2025.

“How to Cop Watch on Your Block.” Washington Square Park Mutual Aid. New York, NY. March 23, 2025.

“Reproductive Justice.” RCC Sexual Violence Resource Center. Madison, WI. March 17, 2025.

“New York City Youth Climate Justice Convergence.” Fridays for Future New York City. New York, NY. March 1, 2025.

“Conversation on A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid.” Wisconsin International Scholars program (sponsored by the UW-Madison International Division). Madison, WI, January 25, 2025.

“Community-Engaged Teaching Practices.” English Department. Madison, WI, November 19, 2024.

“Academic Publishing.” Diversity and Inclusion Student Committee. Madison, WI, October 30, 2024.

“Land Grab Policing: Universities, Landlords, Police,” with Madison Tenant Power. UW-Madison Gaza Solidarity Encampment, Madison, WI, May 7, 2024.

“Why Abortion Rights Are Worker Rights.” South Central Federation of Labor AFL-CIO Education Committee, Madison, WI, March 8, 2023.

“Know Your Post-Graduation Housing Rights,” with Crown Heights Tenant Union. Department of English, New York University, New York, NY, April 15, 2022.

Workshops and talks organized.

“You Cannot Evict a Movement: Tenant Fights That Catalyze, Mobilize, and Win.” Socialism Conference. Chicago, IL. July 3-6, 2026.

“Neighborhood De-Escalation Training.” Audre Lorde Project and the Crown Heights Tenant Union. May 21, 2025.

“NYC Abolitionist Assembly.” New York, NY. April 6, 2025.

“Organizing for abortion access in Mexico.” with Madison Abortion and Reproductive Rights Coalition for Health. March 8, 2025.

“Tenant Organizing 4 Power.” with Crown Heights Tenant Union. February 13 to March 27, 2025 (12 hours).

“Abolish Rent: How do we solve the housing crisis?” with Abolish Rent authors Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis. Autonomous Tenant Union Network, December 15, 2024, virtual.

“Full Spectrum Pregnancy Loss Abortion Doula Training.” With Madison Abortion and Reproductive Rights Coalition for Healthcare (MARRCH). November 7, 2024 to March 27, 2025 (20 hours).

“Labor Organizing Before, During, and After Act 10.” United Faculty & Academic Staff, AFT Local #223, Madison, WI, October 29, 2024.

“How to Fight Administrative Retaliation for Campus Activism.” University Labor Council, UW-Madison, September 20, 2024.

“Open House Renter’s Assembly.” Madison Tenant Power, Madison, WI, July 15, 2023.

“Juneteenth: Black Vulnerability // Black Power.” Crown Heights C.A.R.E. Collective, Brooklyn, NY, June 11, 2022.

“Amplifying Marginalized Student Voices in the Classroom: Participation and its Forms.” Teaching Against the Grain 2019, Rutgers University, April 27, 2019.

“How to Talk about Race and Empire in the Classroom: A Forum.” Committee for Bias Awareness and Prevention, Rutgers University, March 13, 2019.

“English Language Learners in the Writing Classroom.” Rutgers University, September 25, 2017.

“Teaching Principles: Race in the 201/202 Classroom.” Rutgers University, March 6, 2017.

“Reading Race in the Expository Writing Classroom.” Rutgers University, December 1, 2016.

TEACHING AND ADVISING

UW Madison, Department of English

ENGL 173: Race Science and Science Fiction (Spring 2023), Harlem Renaissance and Afro-Modernism (Spring 2024)

ENGL 182: Race Science and Science Fiction, Honors (Fall 2022)

ENGL 245: Mother + Land + Literature (Fall 2023)

With Community-Based Learning designation from the Morgridge Learning Center

ENGL 461: Harlem Renaissance and Afro-Modernism (Spring 2023)

ENGL 829: Property + Possession (Spring 2024)