POTSDAM – Felicity Palmer has been appointed assistant professor of humanities and social sciences at Clarkson University.

Palmer received her bachelor of arts degree in English and French from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Her Ph.D. in English and comparative literature and society is from Columbia University.

She previously held the position of assistant professor of world literature at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Palmer specializes in postcolonial literature and African literature. Her book manuscript, titled Beyond Freedom and Constraint: Alternative Intimacies in African Women's Writing, intends to move postcolonial scholarship beyond the dichotomy between individual freedom and group constraint in the interpretation of female characters in African fiction.

Palmer argues that recent African women's writing helps us to imagine an alternative to this dichotomy by depicting protagonists who form "alternative intimacies," recoding relationships and kinship ties in new and surprising ways.

Palmer has presented her work at conferences, including the African Literature Association and the African Studies Association.

Her forthcoming article, titled "'A Kinship of Desire': Love and the Postcolonial Promise in Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins" is forthcoming in a volume edited by Yianna Liatsos, titled Family Memory-Work: Writing the Home in Contemporary African Literature, published by Africa World Press.