Giselle Anatol
- Professor
Contact Info
Personal Links
Biography —
Giselle Liza Anatol specializes in Caribbean, U.S. African American, and multicultural American literature, as well as works for young readers. In 2015, she published The Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora (Rutgers University Press). This book takes up a demonic, skin-shedding, bloodsucking figure from the Trinidadian folklore of Anatol's youth, and explores the significance of different incarnations of the creature in children’s stories, calypso lyrics, travel writing, and contemporary adult fiction. Anatol has also edited three collections of scholarly essays on popular fantasy literature for children and young adults: Reading Harry Potter (2003), a follow-up volume called Reading Harry Potter Again (2009), and Bringing Light to Twilight: Perspectives on the Pop Culture Phenomenon (2011).
Most recently, Anatol made her debut in creative writing with the picture book Small-Girl Toni and the Quest for Gold, illustrated by Coretta Scott King honoree Raissa Figueroa (Viking 2023), and a contribution to the middle-grade horror anthology The Haunted States of America (Henry Holt/Macmillan 2024).
Professor Anatol has served as the president of the international Association of Caribbean Women Writers & Scholars, the director of KU’s J. Wayne & Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and is currently the director of the Hall Center for the Humanities.
Education —
Research —
Areas of Research - Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora Literature, especially 20th- and 21st-century women's writing, African American Literature, and Children's and Young Adult Literature, particularly representations of race and gender in narratives for young people.
Selected Publications —
Anatol, Giselle Liza. “Getting to the Root of US Healthcare Injustices through Morrison’s Root Workers.” MELUS (January 2022). https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlab053
“The Sea-People of Nalo Hopkinson’s The New Moon’s Arms: Reconceptualizing Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic through Considerations of Myth and Motherhood” in Diasporic Women’s Writing of the Black Atlantic: (En)Gendering Literature and Performance. Eds. Emilia María Durán-Almarza and Esther Álvarez-López. New York: Routledge 2013. 202-17.
“Using Film to Enhance Cultural Understanding: Images of Jamaica in How Stella Got Her Groove Back and The Harder They Come.” Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature. Ed. Supriya Nair. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2012. 183-98.
“Trailing in Jonathan Harker’s Shadow: Bella as Modern-Day Ethnographer in Meyer’s Twilight Novels” Co-authored with Joo Ok Kim. Bringing Light to Twilight: Perspectives on the Pop Culture Phenomenon. Ed. Giselle Liza Anatol. New York: Palgrave, 2011. 191-205.
“Children’s and Young Adult Literatures.” The Cambridge History of African American Literature. Eds. Maryemma Graham and Jerry W. Ward, Jr. New York: Cambridge UP, 2011. 621-54.
“The Replication of Victorian Racial Ideology in Harry Potter.” Reading Harry Potter Again: Critical Essays. Ed. Giselle Liza Anatol. Westport, CT: Praeger/Greenwood, 2009. 109-26.
“Maternal Discourses in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber,” African American Review Vol. 40, No. 1 (Spring 2006): 111-24.
“A Feminist Reading of Soucouyants in Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring and Skin Folk,” Mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature. 37.3 (September 2004): 33-50.
“The Fallen Empire: Exploring Ethnic Otherness in the World of Harry Potter.” Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays. Ed. Giselle Liza Anatol. Westport, CT: Praeger/Greenwood, 2003. 163-78.
“Speaking in (M)Other Tongues: The Role of Language in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother.” Callaloo 25.3 (Summer 2002): 938-953.
Awards & Honors —
Louise Byrd Graduate Educator Award, KU (2023)
Mabel S. Fry Teaching Award, KU Dept. of English (2011 and 2022)
Ned Fleming Award for Excellence in Teaching, KU (2016)