Degrees

Ph.D, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
M.A., Clark University
B.A., Literatures in English, University of the West Indies, Mona (with first-class honors)
Diploma in Teaching Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College (with credit)

Research interests

Africana, gender, postcolonial, performance, and globalization studies; African, African American, and Caribbean Literature.

Carol Bailey is a professor of Black Studies; she teaches courses in African American, African diasporic, and Caribbean literatures, as well as in interdisciplinary Black Studies. She is the author of Writing the Black Diasporic City in the Age of Globalization (Rutgers University Press, 2023) A Poetics of Performance: The Oral-Scribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction (UWI Press, 2014), and co-editor (with Stephanie McKenzie) of Pamela Mordecai’s A Fierce Green Place (New Directions, 2022).

Professor Bailey’s current book projects include (Re)Considering Black: Colonialism, Immigration, and the Black Studies Classroom and Minority Voices from the Academic Superstructure (co-authored with Erold Bailey and Nigel Brissett)  

As the site from which her teaching and much of her service emanate, Professor Bailey’s scholarship is the anchor of her professional work as a faculty member. In addition to being the wellspring of her teaching, Bailey’s scholarly pursuits are also undergirded by her belief that scholarship should be meaningful beyond the confines of the classroom and academic circles.

A trained and committed teacher and active scholar, Professor Bailey views Amherst College as an institution in which she can actualize her commitment to these already synergistic areas of her work. With almost two decades of service to public higher education, she remains deeply committed to access for underserved populations and is encouraged and energized by Amherst College’s historical and sustained work in providing a rigorous and supportive learning environment for a diverse student population.

Recent Scholarly and Professional Activities

Vice President and incoming President, Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars

Co-Chair, Biennial Conference of The Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, University of Costa Rica

Guest-Editor, Journal of West Indian Literature (special issue on Pamela Mordecai)

Frequent Reviewer for Journal of West Indian Literature, Caribbean Quarterly, Meridians, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature