Staff profile

Career Biography

After completing a PhD and teaching at the University of Warwick, I joined Durham in 2004. My work is situated at the intersections of such fields as American hemispheric, US and postcolonial studies, with a particular focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Black and African diaspora literature and culture.

Previous research has looked at the novels of the contemporary African American author Toni Morrison and appears in various edited collections and journals. My first monograph, 'Shuttles in the Rocking Loom': Mapping the Black Diaspora in African American and Caribbean Fiction, came out with Liverpool University Press in 2013. Engaging with the thought of Édouard Glissant and Paul Gilroy, it asks how the Black diaspora has imagined itself and its history in spatial terms. In particular, it investigates the work done by symbolic sites, journeys and counter-geographies to articulate variegated politics of community, identity and cross-cultural relation, taking a comparative approach to Anglo- and Francophone texts from across the twentieth century by African American, Caribbean and Black British novelists. Other published research includes writing on Paul Laurence Dunbar, W E B Du Bois, Octavia Butler and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

My current book turns to visions of futurity in contemporary African American fiction and visual art. Linked to this work, I was co-curator for the 2017 'Time Machines' exhibition in Durham. Arising from my growing focus on art, I'm the Lead for a new interdisciplinary research network 'African Atlantic Lives and Visual Culture.' I'm also a member of the Centre for Visual Arts and Culture (CVAC) and the Centre for Culture and Ecology (CCE), and a fellow of the Institute for Medical Humanities (IMH) at Durham.

In 2009 I co-organised the international symposium 'Toni Morrison: New Directions' at Durham and in 2014 organised the HEA-sponsored event 'Teaching African American Literature and Culture'. I have been the recipient of travel and research grants from the British Library, the British Association for American Studies, the British Academy, Stanford University, the JFK Institute for American Studies at the Free University of Berlin, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. During Spring 2010 I held a Fellowship at the Durham Institute of Advanced Studies and I spent three months in Autumn 2014 as a Research Fellow at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

I was the Secretary of the British Association for American Studies, 2014-17, and a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, 2017-20. I am currently an Associate Editor for the journal Contemporary Women's Writing and recently re-joined the Editorial Board of the Journal of American Studies.

Supervision

I welcome supervisees working in the areas listed under Teaching and Research Interests below. I have supervised research on American, African, African American, British and contemporary women's literature.

Teaching Interests

American Literature

Postcolonial Studies

Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Fiction

• Black Diaspora Literature and Culture (African American, Caribbean, Black British)

• 2011: Toni Morrison: New Directions: Special Issue of MELUS, 36, 2 (2011) co-edited with Kathryn Nicol

Authored book

• Terry, J. (2013). ‘Shuttles in the Rocking Loom’: Mapping the Black Diaspora in African American and Caribbean Fiction. Liverpool University Press

Book review

• Terry, J. (2023). Review of The Postapocalyptic Black Female Imagination. American Literary History, 35(2), 1027-1029. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajad050
• Terry, J. (2015). Review of Black Intersectionalities: A Critique for the 21st Century. Journal of Gender Studies, 24(2), 242-244
• Terry, J. (2007). Review of Race and Form: Towards a Contextualized Narratology of African American Autobiography. Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 30(4),

Chapter in book

• Terry, J. (2020). “She was miraculously neutral”: Feeling, Ethics and Metafiction in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. In J. Wyatt, & S. George (Eds.), Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers: Race: Ethics: Narrative Form (33-51). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429199271
• Terry, J. (2016). The Past, Present and Future in Critical Afrofuturisms. In C. Bailey, & F. Okoye (Eds.), The future of us : an anthology (47-55). Afrofutures_UK
• Terry, J. (2009). 'When Dey ’Listed Colored Soldiers': Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Poetic Engagement with the Civil War, Masculinity and Violence. In K. D. Darrow (Ed.), Nineteenth-century Literature Criticism. Criticism of various topics in nineteenth-century literature, including literary and critical movements, prominent themes and genres, anniversary celebrations, and surveys of national literatures. Gale / Cengage Learning
• Terry, J. (2009). Toni Morrison. In D. Seed (Ed.), A Companion to Twentieth-Century United States Fiction (480-488). Wiley
• Terry, J. (2008). The Fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois. In S. Zamir (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to W.E.B. Du Bois (48-63). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol9780521871518.004
• Terry, J. (2007). 'When All the Wars Are Over': The Utopian Impulses of Toni Morrison’s Postwar Fiction. In A. Usandizaga, & A. Monnickendam (Eds.), Back to peace : reconciliation and retribution in the postwar period (95-118). Notre Dame University Press
• Terry, J. (2006). Candomblé in Toni Morrison’s Paradise. In S. Stave (Ed.), Toni Morrison and the Bible: Contested Intertextualities (192-214). Peter Lang
• Terry, J. (2005). A. J. Verdelle. In H. M. Ostrom, & D. J. Jr. (Eds.), The Greenwood encyclopedia of African American literature (1653-1654). Greenwood Press. https://doi.org/10.1336/0313329729

Journal Article

• Terry, J. (2024). Scopes, Specula, the Speculative: Histories of Medical Experimentation and Looking in African American Art and Fiction. Journal of American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875824000136
• Terry, J. (2023). ‘It was a departure of sorts’: glocal homes in recent short fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Efemia Chela, Chibundu Onuzo and Lesley Nneka Arimah. Cultural Studies, 37(2), 224-242. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2022.2104894
• Terry, J. (2019). Time Lapse and Time Capsules: The Chronopolitics of Octavia E. Butler's Fiction. Women's Studies, 48(1), 26-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2018.1559407
• Terry, J. (2014). ‘Breathing the air of a world so new’: Rewriting the Landscape of America in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. Journal of American Studies, 48(1), 127-145. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021875813000686
• Terry, J. (2013). ‘When the sea of living memory has receded’: Cultural Memory and Literary Narratives of the Middle Passage. Memory Studies, 6(4), 474-488. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698012467999
• Nicol, K., & Terry, J. (2011). Guest Editors’ Introduction: Toni Morrison: New Directions. MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 36(2), 7-12. https://doi.org/10.1353/mel.2011.0022
• Terry, J. (2010). The Work of Cultural Memory: Imagining Atlantic Passages in Literature of the Black Diaspora. Insights (Durham), 3(19), 1-13
• Terry, J. (2007). 'When Dey ’Listed Colored Soldiers': Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Poetic Engagement with the Civil War, Masculinity and Violence. African American Review, 41(2), 269-275
• Terry, J. (2007). Buried Perspectives: Narratives of Landscape in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. Narrative Inquiry, 17(2), 93-118

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Terry, J. (2005). Reading Toni Morrison Critically