Anthonia Kalu is a professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature & Foreign Languages; and, Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC-Riverside. She came to UCR from the Ohio State University-Columbus, Ohio. In Summer 2014, she served as a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow at the University of Ilorin-Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria on capacity building, research development and mentoring for faculty and graduate students.

She has served as president of the Women’s Caucus of the African Literature Association (WOCALA), and on the Steering Committee of the Women’s Caucus of the African Studies Association. She is a Past President (2013-2014) of the African Literature Association (ALA), and has served as a Board Member for the African Studies Association (USA).

Kalu’s scholarship and teaching interests include African literatures, African American literature, African gender studies, Women in Development, and Women and war. Her research interests include African and African American literatures and literary theory construction, Women in the African Diaspora, African development issues and globalization. She is currently completing work on an anthology titled Women in Contemporary African Literature. She is also continuing work on a second book length project titled Language, Woman and Story: African Literature and Social Transformation. Kalu has also published fictional works.

Her awards include a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, a Rockefeller Writer-in-Residence Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship for teachers. Her published works include articles in journals like Africa Today, Research in African Literatures, African Studies Review, the Atlantic Literary Review, Seminar and the Literary Griot. Other publications include Women, Literature and Development in Africa (Africa World Press, 2001); Broken Lives and Other Stories(Fiction) (Ohio University Press, 2003), and the Rienner Anthology of African Literature (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007). The Anthology, the first work of its kind in African literature, received ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award (2007) in the reference category. She is also co-editor of Reflections: An Anthology of New Works by African Women Poets (2013), and the eBook, Chinua Achebe: A Tribute(1930-2013) (ALA Books, 2013).

Interview with Professor Kalu at WordMothers

Professor Kalu’s Curriculum Vitae 

Professor Kalu’s Essay “Humanitarian Interventionism: Life, Beauty and Our Common Humanity”