Constance E. Berkley, (retired) Full-time Lecturer, Program in Africana Studies

B.A., M.A., Columbia University; Ph.D., New York University

Constance E. Berkley rejoined the Vassar faculty in 1985.

Dr. Berkley wrote her B.A. thesis on "The Hero in Afro-American Drama." Her M.A. thesis studied "African Images in European Drama," and her Ph.D. thesis focused on "The Roots of Consciousness Molding the Art of El Tayeb Salih: Contemporary Sudanese Author." She focuses her teaching on "African (Afro-Arabic/Sudanese/Islamic) Literature, African-American Drama" and cultural courses concerning Africa and the African Diaspora.

Dr. Berkley has held two Fulbright Lecturer/Research Fellowships in the past ten years, when she taught in Sudan and Morocco and lectured in Egypt and Beirut on Sudanese and African American Literatures.

Dr. Berkley is one of the founders, a past president and Newsletter editor and currently Secretary of the "Sudan Studies Association," which is an international scholarly association. She has published numerous articles on Sudanese Literature and culture. She has also edited three volumes of Sudanese literature, including a translated volume of interviews with the famed Sudanese author El Tayeb Salih. She also inaugurated Vassar's Morocco JYA program. In the spring of 2000, she chaired the nineteenth annual Sudan Studies Association Conference with the support of the Dean's office and various Vassar departments. She has also published numerous poems in journals and several anthologies (especially during the sixties and seventies).