Research Interests
Contemporary Black Fiction; Black Postmodernism; Gender/Sexuality Studies and African American Narrative; Black Feminist Theory and Criticism; Hip Hop and the Literary; Black Speculative Fiction
My research uses a critical black feminist lens to consider how a variety of African American cultural texts address evolving questions of racial subjectivity, sexual politics, and class in the United States. My first book, Private Lives, Proper Relations: Regulating Black Intimacy (Minnesota, 2007), examined how African American writers articulate the political consequences of intimacy for the already-vulnerable black subject. In 2011, I guest edited a special issue of the journal African American Review on "Hip Hop and the Literary." My current project, "Bourgeois in the Flesh: Class, Sex, and the Vulnerable Racial Body" (under contract with the Univ of Minnesota Press), explores the dilemma of black middle-class embodiment in post-Civil Rights era African American fiction.
Education
English, Ph.D., Duke University
English, B.A., Spelman College
Courses Taught
I regularly teach courses on contemporary African American literature and culture, black speculative fiction, and hip hop (as) narrative, as well as black women's writing and black feminist theory.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Head, African American Studies
Professor, African American Studies
Professor, English
Highlighted Publications
Jenkins, C. M. (2019). Black Bourgeois: Class and Sex in the Flesh. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvr695mr
Jenkins, C. M. (2007). Private Lives, Proper Relations: Regulating Black Intimacy. University of Minnesota Press.
Recent Publications
Jenkins, C. M. (2019). Black Bourgeois: Class and Sex in the Flesh. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvr695mr
Jenkins, C. M. (2017). Black Refusal, Black Magic: Reading African American Literature Now. American Literary History, 29(4), 779-789. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajx033
Jenkins, C. M. (2016). New bourgeoisie, old bodies: Performing post-civil rights black privilege in Tar Baby and School Daze. Criticism, 58(4), 621-645. https://doi.org/10.13110/criticism.58.4.0621
Jenkins, C. M. (2014). "A wider society": Man Gone Down, Class, and "Post-Racial" Vulnerability. Paper presented at modern language association annual convention, United States.
Jenkins, C. M. (2014). Bow down B*tches: Feminism, hip hop, and the impolitic pleasures of listening. Paper presented at American Studies Association Annual Convention, United States.