About

Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi is a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and serves as the Associate Dean of Faculty and Staff Development and Success in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at NC State University. She has a background in Bilingual Letters in English and French from the University of Yaounde, where she earned her Licence ès lettres bilingues in 1979, her Maîtrise/M.A. in African Literature in 1981, and her Doctorat 3ème Cycle in African and African Diaspora Literature in 1987. She completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at McGill University in 1994. Her academic work includes authoring books on gender in African women’s writing, stories from Cameroon, and anthologies of African women poets, as well as editing special journal issues on topics related to African literature and indigenous knowledge. Dr. Nfah-Abbenyi writes fiction under the pen name Makuchi, with her stories addressing significant events in Cameroon, such as the Lake Nyos disaster and ongoing conflicts, and her creative work has been translated into Dutch and Italian. She contributes to the academic community through her research, editorial work, and creative writing, and she plays a key role in supporting faculty and staff success within the college.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• History
• Gender studies
• Law
• Archaeology
• Economics
• Development economics
• Media studies
• Linguistics
• Art
• Ethnology

Selected publications

• Feminism and Modernity in Anglophone African Women’s Writing: A 21st-Century Global Context by Dobrota Pucherová (review)

  Tulsa Studies in Women s Literature · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Gender studies
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• "I don't mean to be Racist but …" Home and the Politics of Belonging

  Feminist formations · 2024-12-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract: How do feminists of Africa write and experience home? I was born, raised, and educated in Cameroon and Canada but have lived and taught at institutions of higher learning in the United States for almost three decades. To the outside world, I am an accomplished, privileged academic and rightly so, but multiple aspects of my identity as an African-woman-academic are often challenged in interactions that engender a continual negotiation of nationality, gender, race, and class. In this creative non-fiction essay, I explore how I employ the privilege of mobility, migration, and transnational experiences to challenge fixed notions of space and place, of home and belonging.

  PublisherDOI

• Am I Anglophone? Identity politics and postcolonial trauma in Cameroon at war

  Journal of the African Literature Association · 2020 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Gender studies

  I was born in the English-speaking South West Province of Cameroon and raised in the English-speaking North West Province where I was educated in a system of primary through high school studies modeled on the British education system of G.C.E. Ordinary and Advanced Levels. After my A’ Levels, I moved to the French-speaking Centre Province where I enrolled at the University of Yaounde. There I earned undergraduate and graduate degrees, including a Licence ès Lettres Bilingues—a B.A. in Bilingual Letters (English and French)—for which I had to complete a French language immersion requirement in Douala in the French-speaking Littoral Province. After my university studies, I worked in the French-speaking West Province and English-speaking South West Province before moving to French/English-speaking Montreal, Canada where I studied Comparative Literature at McGill University and later immigrated to the United States. This essay, written in the context of the current “Anglophone Crisis” and the war taking place in Cameroon, is a personal meditation as a citizen, scholar, and fiction writer on the elusive nature of identity that the postcolonial nation-state seeks to capture, contain, and/or impose on the multiple “fragmented” selves of its citizens; identities that are by necessity in flux and as such either refuse to be contained within state-sanctioned acts of linguistic terrorism and/or restrained by socio-cultural and political repression.

  PublisherDOI

• Fragmented Nation or the Anglophone-Francophone Problem in Cameroon

  Journal of the African Literature Association · 2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • History

  "Fragmented Nation or the Anglophone-Francophone Problem in Cameroon." Journal of the African Literature Association, 14(2), pp. 171–172

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Journal of the African Literature Association · 2019-01-02

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unlocking our silences: the ALA Oral History Project

  Journal of the African Literature Association · 2017-09-02 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Cameroon’s national literatures: An introduction

  Tydskrif vir letterkunde · 2016-04-11 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is an online, peer-reviewed, accredited scholarly journal which publishes original, previously unpublished research and overview articles on theoretical, applied or comparative aspects of African literatures and cultural practices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Francophone Cameroon literature: A conversation with Ambroise Kom

  Tydskrif vir letterkunde · 2016-04-11

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is an online, peer-reviewed, accredited scholarly journal which publishes original, previously unpublished research and overview articles on theoretical, applied or comparative aspects of African literatures and cultural practices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Anglophone Cameroon literature: A conversation with Bole Butake

  Tydskrif vir letterkunde · 2016-04-11 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is an online, peer-reviewed, accredited scholarly journal which publishes original, previously unpublished research and overview articles on theoretical, applied or comparative aspects of African literatures and cultural practices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reviews

  Journal of the African Literature Association · 2013-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Hella Bloom Cohen

  2 shared

• Peter Wuteh Vakunta

  1 shared

• Jason D. Price

  Australian National University

  1 shared

• Bole Butake

  1 shared

• Marie Krüger

  University Medical Center Freiburg

  1 shared

• Joya Uraizee

  Saint Louis University

  1 shared

• Lisa McNee

  1 shared

• Sonja Darlington

  Beloit College

  1 shared

Labs

• Research and EngagementPI

Education

• Ph.D., Comparative Literature

  McGill University

  1994

Awards & honors

• Pushcart Prize nomination for 'Woman of the Lake'
• Honorable Mention in the 2023 Best Short Story award categor…