My research is primarily focused on modern African American and Caribbean literature. My first book, C.L.R. James and Creolization: Circles of Influence (2001) places Caribbean-born James in conversation with African American writers including Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. I am interested in concepts and representations of racialisation and modern life and I explore these issues in U.S. American, Caribbean diaspora and Black British literatures spanning various genres and historical periods. I often use a comparative approach to see how particular texts speak to one another across time or place. I am currently writing my second book, Black Childhood in Modern African American Fiction. In this work and in recent articles, I explore the literary representations of children, young adults, blackness and modernity in novels and short stories from 1945 onwards.
I welcome PhD student applications in my areas of research including African American literature and culture, Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora literature and culture, modern and contemporary literatures of the Americas, and literary representations of age and racialisation.
Undergraduate: English and American Literature 19th century to the present day (Prelims Papers 3 and 4); FHS Papers 6 and 7 (American novel post 1945, African American Literature, Caribbean Literature)
Postgraduate: 20th century to the present, African American Literature, Caribbean Literature
Twitter: @DrNicoleKing
Nicole King earned her BA at Princeton University and her MA and PhD degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of American Studies and Irish Journal of American Studies, and a Management Board member of the European Journal of American Culture. She is a Senior Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford. She is also an elected Fellow of the English Association and served as one of its Trustees between 2014 and 2023. She was awarded Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) in 2017 for her work in educational research and leadership. Before joining the Oxford English Faculty, Nicole King taught at the University of Maryland, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Reading (UK) and Goldsmiths, University of London. She also worked for several years at the English Subject Centre, an organization that supported the research and practice of teaching and learning in UK further and higher education.
