Research and Publications

Book Projects in Progress

Biomythography Bayou is a decolonizing narrative portraiture project featuring experimental performative writing. With an emphasis on queer, intersex, trans, and femme embodied knowledges, this manuscript engages West African worldviews, Poarch Band (Creek Nation) wisdom, and Black Catholic Creole cosmology, offering readers archival histories, contemporary political discourse, and tellings from the ancestral imaginary. Paring contextualizing non-fiction essays with biomythographic narrative portraiture, Biomythography Bayou presents local and regional Black southern folklore, dialect, foodways, religious and spiritual practices, music, and cultural events. These are celebrated in the portraits and conveyed from the first-person viewpoint of the narrative characters whose generational and place-based connections reveal themselves throughout the text. Book proposal submitted (MS Invited/Under Term of Exclusivity, The Griot Project Book Series, Bucknell University Press)

Femme Query: Politics, Pleasure, and Queer of Color Pedagogies examines three perspectives; femme pleasures, femme politics, and femme possibilities. “Pleasures” interrogates sexual desire, sartorial expression, formations of femme relational power, and approaches to cultivating sustainable inclusive beloved community. “Politics” explores political agency and creative femme methodologies for addressing misogynoir, violence, and invisibility. Finally, “Pedagogies” envisions gender [Afro]futures, femme performance as radical creative teaching and learning practice, and presents “liberationship pedagogies” as a framework for QTPOC loving as liberatory praxis. This qualitative work engages and contributes to the expanding literature on femme gender identity and expression and centers the lived experiences of activists, cultural workers, artists, and educators of color. (Book proposal in revision).

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Lewis M. (in press) Liberatory Art and Design Education: Engaging Queer of Color Pedagogies for Creative Practice. St. John’s University Humanities Review.

Lewis M. and M. Cooper (2020). The Saviors of Gullah Identity: Teaching Daughters of the Dust and the “Classics” of Black Women Writers. Feminist Formations 32(1) 216-225.

Lewis, M. and S. Miller (2018). How does it feel to be a problem? A conversation between two feminist black queer femme chairs. Feminist Formations, 30(3).

Johnson, A., & Lewis, M. (2018). Transcending the acronym, traversing gender: A conversation in the margins of the margins. Women & Language, 41(1).

Lewis, M. and D. C. Hill. (2018). Liberationship: Black Queer Feminist Lovership Pedagogy as Emancipatory Praxis. Pre/Text Special Issue: Queer Rhetorics, Dirtysexy, 24(1-4).

Lewis, M. (2018). Communicating Variations of Blackness: An Intersectional Trans and Intersex Africana Studies Perspective. Communication Teacher, 11(1), 1-8.

Grzanka, P. R., Bhatia, R., Lewis, M. M., Parks, S. L., Woodfork, J., Casiano, M. (2017). Intersectionality, Inc.: A Dialogue on Intersectionality’s Travels and Tribulations. Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, & Social Justice/ Études Critiquess Sur Le Genre, La Culture, et La Justice Sociale, Special Issue: What is Intersectional About Intersectionality Now? 38(1), 16-27.

Lewis, M. (2016). A Genuine Article: Intersectionality, Black Lesbian Gender Expression, and the Feminist Pedagogical Project. Journal of Lesbian Studies Special Issue: Identities, Gender Performances & Pedagogical Practices of Black and Brown Lesbian Educators, 1-12.

Lewis, M. (2011). Body of Knowledge: Black Queer Feminist Pedagogy, Praxis, and Embodied Text. Journal of Lesbian Studies 15(1), 49-57.

Peer Reviewed Book Chapters

Lewis M. (accepted). Bridge Work Ahead: Women of Color Liberatory Pedagogies, Then and Now in G. Wilson, J. Acuff, and A. Kraehe (Eds.), A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back.

Lewis, M. (2020). Pedagogical Femme Sensibilities: Teaching Gender and Sexuality Studies Through Queer Affect and Embodiment, In LaFollette, K. and N. Santavicca (Eds.), Queer Approaches: Emotion, Expression, and Communication in the Classroom. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press. (pp. 41-57).

Lewis, M. (2020). A Bridge Across Our Fears: Queer Feminist Intersectional Ethnic Studies as Interdisciplinary Praxis. L. A. Saraswati and B. Shaw (Eds.), Feminist and Queer Theory: An Intersectional and Transnational Reader. Oxford University Press.

Lewis, M. (2018). The Vintage Black Glamour Showcase: Developing Media Literacy and Cultural Competency. In H. Kent (Ed.), Teaching Fashion Studies: Exercises and Pedagogies. London: Bloomsbury. (pp. 171-180).

Lewis, M. (2015). Corporeal Presence: Engaging the Black Lesbian Pedagogical Body in Feminist Classrooms and College Communities. In T. Melancon and J. M. Braxton (Eds.), Contemporary Black Female Sexualities. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. (pp. 41-56).

Invited Articles and Book Chapters

Lewis, M. (accepted). Transformative Arts/Transformative Acts: Black Queer Feminist Art and Design Pedagogy. Artlines: A Women’s Caucus for Art Publication.

Lewis, M. (2016). Pedagogy and the Sista’ Professor: Teaching Black Queer Feminist Studies. In R. Brock, D. Nix-Stevenson, and P. Miller (Eds.), The Critical Black Studies Reader. New York: Peter Lang.

Lewis, M. (2015). Pedagogy and the Sista’ Professor: Teaching Black Queer Feminist Studies. In E. Meiners and T. Quinn (Eds.), Sexualities in Education: A Reader. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2011 (pp. 33-40).

Lewis, M. (2015). Incorporating Transfeminist Perspectives: Women’s Studies and Gender Variance. In M.T. Berger and C. Radeloff (Eds.), Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World. 2^nd ed. New York: Routledge. (pp. 45-47).

Poetry

Lewis, M. (in press). Thunder Cake. In J. Crews and M. Walsh (Eds.), Queer Nature. Philadelphia, PA: Autumn House Press.

Lewis, M. (2020). Catfish Mardi Gras Queen. In Judd, Bettina (Ed.), Auburn Avenue, Autumn/Winter. Atlanta, GA.

Lewis, M. (2017) We Take On. In Stephanie Andrea Allen and Lauren Cherelle (Eds.) Serendipity: Black Lesbian Literary Collective. Fall/issue 2.

Op-Ed Article

Lewis, M. (2017). Reading Myself into Existence, Inside Higher Ed, Tuesday, October 31, 2017.

Book and Film Reviews

Lewis, M. and R. Epstein (2012). Review: Cold War Femme: Lesbianism, National Identity, and Hollywood Cinema, by Robert J. Corber and Soldiers’ Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television since World War II, by Yvonne Tasker. Feminist Formations. 24(3). (pp. 136-142).

Lewis, M. (2011). Review of A Touch of Greatness, by Leslie Sullivan and Fem Crit: Experimental Works for Educational Environments, by Lisa Hayes, et al. Films for the Feminist Classroom/ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3(2).