Bodies of Water in African American Literature, Music, and Film

Sharon A. Lewis, PhD is a retired Professor Emerita of English at Montclair State University (USA). There, she taught African American women’s literature, global women prose writers, and introduction to literary theory. Her research interests are the literary intersections of social class, race and gender, and environmental thought in Black women’s novels. In addition to creative writing and literary analysis publications, she is co-editor of Gloria Naylor’s Fiction: Contemporary Explorations of Class and Capitalism with Dr. Ama S. Wattley.

Ama S. Wattley, PhD is an Associate professor of English at Pace University in New York. Her areas of interest include African American drama, African American women’s literature, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American literature. She has published essays on playwrights Alice Childress, August Wilson, Pearl Cleage, P. J. Gibson, Aishah Rahman, and Amiri Baraka, as well as novelists Toni Morrison and Ann Petry. She is co-editor of Gloria Naylor’s Fiction: Contemporary Explorations of Class and Capitalism with Dr. Sharon A. Lewis and Between Worlds: An Anthology of Contemporary Fiction and Criticism with Dr. Deborah Poe.