Jermaine Singleton
Jermaine Singleton came to Hamline University from the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D. in English. He earned his Masters of Arts degree in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In his scholarship and teaching, Professor Singleton aims to explore how literary and cultural texts undermine the tyranny of “history” and "common sense." Professor Singleton’s teaching portfolio includes classes in American and African American literatures and cultures, literary and cultural theory, speculative fiction studies, critical race theory, black feminist and queer of color theory, whiteness studies, design justice, psychoanalytic theory, and critical media theory.
He is the author of Cultural Melancholy: Readings of Race, Impossible Mourning, and African American Ritual (University of Illinois Press, 2015). He is currently at work on Running from Ourselves: Why Advancing Social Change Depends on Rethinking "History," a book that explores and addresses the vestiges of race-based housing discrimination baked into the progressive impulses of the United States. His next book, To Lie Like the Truth: Black Speculation and the Politics of Socio-Technical Futures, is an interdisciplinary analysis of speculative and postmodern fictions of slavery and colonialism.
His work has been published in Sparked: George Floyd, Racism, and the Progressive Illusion (2021), Stillpoint: A Digital Magazine in the Eye of the Storm (2020 & 2019), Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights (2019), James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain: Historical and Critical Essays (2005), College Literature, MAWA Review, and The Journal of the Midwest Modern Languages Association.
"English majors are good at deciding why and when to engage and, moreover, defining the terms of engagement. These critical consumers and producers of texts consider audience and purpose with a historically sensitive ear to the ground."
-Jermaine Singleton
