Title: Graduate Student

Program: PhD
Department: English

Office: Buttrick 4-68
Email: destiny.o.birdsong@vanderbilt.edu

Degrees

• M.F.A. in Creative Writing [Poetry], Vanderbilt University (2009)
• M.A. in English, Vanderbilt University (2007)
• M.A. in English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette (2006)
• B.A. in English and History with Highest Honors, Fisk University (2004)

Research Area

• depictions of poor whites in slave and neo-slave narratives
• the black female body and illness in Afro-Diasporic literature
• black love relationships in Afro-Diasporic literature
• hip-hop aesthetics

Current Research

• "Health and Holistic Healing; Some Observations on Black Female Character in the Works of Gloria Naylor, Edwidge Danticat, and Opal Palmer Adisa"
• "Constructions of Masculinity in the Works of Roger Mais"
• "Sugar" [MFA thesis]

Current Courses

• Instructor, English 104W

Current Positions

• Research Coordinator for Voices From Our America
• Research Assistant for Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo, Associate Professor of English

Previous Positions

• Consultant, The Writing Studio, 2007-2008
• Co-recruitment Coordinator, Vanderbilt University English Department, 2006-2007
• Teaching Assistant, Department of English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, June 2005-August 2006
• Graduate Student Organization Representative for the English Department [UL], 2005-2006
• Student representative for the Graduate Committee [UL English Dept.], 2005-2006
• Graduate Student Funding Liaison for the Fifth Annual Graduate Conference on Language and Literature [UL], 2006
• Staff Member of In the Beginning [A Journal of Freshman Literature at UL], Spring 2005

Professional Societies

• Academy of American Poets

Professional Honors

• Cave Canem Fellow, 2009
• Rose Alley Press Achievement Award [VU], 2009
• Academy of American Poets Prize [VU], 2008
• Conference of Southern Graduate Schools/ProQuest UMI Distinguished Thesis Award in the Humanities and Fine Arts, 2007 [for thesis completed at UL]
• Richard G. Neiheisel Phi Beta Kappa Endowed Award for the Outstanding M.A. Graduate of Spring 2006 [UL]
• The Phi Beta Kappa Society, Fisk University, 2004

Miscellaneous

"He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him."
--Gerard Manley Hopkins