Africana Studies Advisory Board
The Africana Studies Advisory Board consists of faculty and staff with expertise in Africana Studies and related fields. Advisory board members assist the program director with recruitment of minors, advertising classes, reviewing proposed classes to be considered as counting towards the minor, and event programming.
Dr. ShaDawn Battle
Assistant Professor of Critical Ethnic and Black Studies
battles1@xavier.edu
404 Schott Hall
Phone: 513-745-3627
ML 5191
Chicago native, ShaDawn Battle earned her PhD in 2017 from The University of Cincinnati. Her research interests include African American Literature, Afro-Diasporic Studies, Black Feminist/Womanist Studies, Critical Race Epistemology, and Hip-Hop Studies. Dr. Battle has taught a wide array of African American Literature courses, with emphasis on the Black musical tradition, state-sanctioned violence, and Black liberation politics. She has also taught courses centering the lived experiences of Black women—examining topics such as the invisibility and hypervisibility of Black women and girls in literature, media, medicine, and the “justice” system. Dr. Battle is now interested in expanding her teaching portfolio to include courses on African literary studies and postcolonial theory.
Dr. Battle writes on anti-Black politics and Black masculine and feminine politics, intersecting hip hop, anti-colonial theories, critical race theory, and literature that spans the Black Diaspora. She is currently composing a manuscript on Chicago Footwork, which is not merely a Chicago street dance and culture, but an embodied vernacular language of resistance. She is also directing and producing a documentary on the dance form (of which she is a practitioner), titled, Footwork Saved My Life: The Evolution of Chicago Footwork. Dr. Battle is a lover of dolphins, dogs (especially her Dachshund, Jackson El-Chapo), James Baldwin, Nipsey Hussle, basketball, Jay-Z, and family.
Dr. Adam Clark
Associate Professor of Theology; Take It On Director
clarkadam@xavier.edu
307 Hinkle Hall
Phone: 513-745-3233
Fax: 513-745-3215
ML 4442
Adam Clark is committed to the idea that theological education in the twenty first century must function as a counter-story. One that equips students to read against the grain of the dominant culture and inspires them to live into the Ignatian dictum of going forth "to set the world on fire." To this end, Dr. Clark is intentional about pedagogical practices that raise critical consciousness by going beneath surface meanings, unmasking conventional wisdoms and reimagining the good. During his tenure at Xavier, Dr. Clark has received several distinctions in teaching including Teacher of the Year Nomination by the Alpha Sigma Nu International Honor Society and The Faculty Support Award by the Black Student Association. His courses on Black Theology, Jesus and Power, Faith and Justice and Religion and Hip Hop contribute to the Jesuit practice of educating students in the service of faith and the promotion of justice. He currently serves as co-chair of Black Theology Group at the American Academy of Religion, actively publishes in the area of black theology and black religion and participates in social justice groups at Xavier and in the Cincinnati area.
Dr. Daleah Goodwin
Assistant Professor of History
goodwind3@xavier.edu
512 Walter Schott Hall
Phone: 513-745-4246
Fax: 513-745-2074
ML 5161
Daleah Goodwin (she/her) is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century Black women. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy in U.S. History with a concentration in Women’s Studies and African American History from the University of Georgia, and her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in History from the Florida A&M University. Dr. Goodwin is currently working on a biography entitled Sisterly Affections: The Work of Miss Hallie Quinn Brown. Her forthcoming work on Hallie Quinn Brown examines early twentieth century professional elocutionist, educator, and a founding member of the Black women’s club movement to explore and identify sites, themes, and patterns in Black women’s individual and organizational activism.
Dr. Mich Nyawalo
Associate Professor of Gender and Diversity Studies, RIGS Department Department
nyawalom@xavier.edu
405 Schott Hall
Phone: 513-745-2041
ML 5191
Mich Yonah Nyawalo earned his Bachelor’s and Master of Arts degrees in English (with specializations in literature, sociolinguistics and cultural studies) at West University and Gothenburg University (respectively) in Sweden. He completed his second Master’s as well as a Ph.D. in comparative literature with a focus on media and globalization studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He is fluent in French, English, Swedish, Swahili and Luo (one of his identities includes being from the Luo ethnic group in Kenya). His research and teaching intersect with fields such as globalization studies, postcolonial studies, transnational feminist and queer studies, media studies, critical pedagogy and service-learning. The years he has spent living and studying in Kenya, Uganda, France, Sweden and the United States have highly defined his academic projects, which appropriate a mixture of critical tools and scholarly texts derived from the fields of African, African Diaspora and African American Studies (Mich was born in Kenya and was raised in different countries throughout his childhood, adolescent years, and as a young adult).
Aside from his academic interests, Mich also enjoys dining out, traveling abroad, sharing a good bottle of wine with friends and colleagues. He loves science fiction and may occasionally be found donning a Starfleet uniform (from Star Trek) during Halloween parties.
Dr. Kayla Wheeler
Assistant Professor of Critical Ethnic Studies and Theology, Africana Studies Program Director
406 Schott Hall
Phone: 513-745-3282
ML 5191
Dr. Wheeler was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is a third generation Ohioan. She is a first-generation college graduate. Dr. Wheeler earned her Ph.D. in Religious Studies with a concentration in Islam in America from the University of Iowa in 2017. Her research explores Black Muslim women's material culture, digital religion, and contemporary Islam in the Americas. She is writing a book entitled, Fashioning Black Islam, which provides a history of Black Muslim fashion in the United States from the 1930s to the present. She is also working on a digital humanities project, Mapping Malcolm's Boston, which explores Malcolm X's life in Boston from the 1940s to 1950s. Dr. Wheeler is the curator of the award-winning Black Islam Syllabus.
