Kevin Meehan

Department of English

Professor

Kevin.Meehan@ucf.edu

Campus Location

Trevor Colbourn Hall 253F

Education

Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from University of Maryland (1996)
B.A. in Philosophy from Georgetown University (1984)

Research Interests

Caribbean Literature and Culture
African American Literature and Culture
Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development
Literary Translation
Popular Music in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Recent Research Activities

Click on the links below to see some recent video work:

"Phule Phule/Ye Banks and Braes" mash-up arrangement of classic songs by Rabindranath Tagore and Robert Burns, performed with Amrita Ghosh as The Ghost Peppers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB4Wf3EBQzU
"The History and Future of the Nevis Banjo" ethnomusicology museum talk at Bath Hotel in Nevis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ppZ4KmvAc
"Provisions Interview Reel Barbados" on OAS-funded research partnership with Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College implementing hydroponics in the Caribbean region https://youtu.be/KG9tTxZuRV0?t=346
"Food and Jobs for the Future" on Sustainable Agriculture developments at Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College in St. Kitts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUyQgFsn6I
"CFBC Combats Plastic Pollution" on World Environment Day activities in St. Kitts-Nevis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KMiV-KfqLs&t=158s
"On Janm Pou On Kann/One Leg for a Cane" spoken word performance by Marie Léticée (in French and Guadeloupean Kreyol with English subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skB849HV6wc
"UCF in Print Episode" on UCF Partnership with the University of Fondwa in rural Haiti
Harold Taylor Speaks Part 1
Harold Taylor Speaks Part 2
Kimbombo Performs "Cuban Suite" with Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés
www.sugarcitymusic.com

Publications

Books

People Get Ready: African American and Caribbean Cultural Exchange. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2009.
https://www.academia.edu/9590001/People_Get_Ready_African_American_and_Caribbean_Cultural_Exchange

Articles/Essays

"Kreyol Intertextuality and Decolonizing Narrative in Veillées noires." Dalhousie French Studies 116 (2020). This essay identifies three levels of intertextuality in the short story, “Echec et mat” by Léon-Gontran Damas. Incorporating folkloric tales, lyrics from popular music, and 19th Century satiric writing in Kreyol, “Echec et mat” offers a microcosm of the intertextual techniques employed throughout Damas' under-appreciated collection of stories, Veillées noires.
https://www.academia.edu/92905257/Kreyol_Intertextuality_and_Decolonizing_Narrative_in_Veill%C3%A9es...
“Agricultural Diversification and Non-Traditional Systems for Sustainable Food Production.” In Agricultural Diversification in the Caribbean, ed., Wayne Ganpat. Kingston: Ian Randle and University of the West Indies Press, 2015: 299-360. With Leighton Naraine et al. https://www.academia.edu/36631767/Agricultural_Diversification_and_Non-Traditional_Systems_for_Susta...
“Rise Up? New Directions in the Caribbean Bildungsroman.” Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International 7:1 (Spring 2018): 11-18.

https://www.academia.edu/36575765/Rise_Up_New_Directions_in_the_Caribbean_Womens_Bildungsroman
“James, C.L.R.” Major author entry in The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, eds., Sangeeta Ray and Henry Schwarz. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2016. Blackwell Reference Online.

https://www.academia.edu/25468796/_C.L.R._James_Entry_in_Encyclopedia_of_Postcolonial_Studies_
“DIY Noise and Compositional Horizons: Indie Musicians and Promoters in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” Civilisations 13 (2014): 51-73. With Billy Geoghegan.

https://www.academia.edu/9595398/_DIY_Noise_and_Compositional_Horizons_Indie_Musicians_and_Promoters...
“Man-Made Disasters: Viewing Mt. Pelée After Katrina and the Haiti Earthquake.” Small Axe SX Salon 12 (May 2013) http://smallaxe.net/wordpress3/discussions/2013/05/27/manmade-disasters/
“‘Bifurcated Mobility’? Telecommunication, Globalization, and International Service-Learning.” Faculty Focus 9:3: (2010): 10-11. http://www.fctl.ucf.edu/Publications/FacultyFocus/content/2010/2010_october.pdf
“Caribbean Literature and Popular Culture.” Understanding the Contemporary Caribbean. Eds., Richard Hillman and Thomas D’Agostino. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2003. 305-332. With Paul Miller. Revised and reprinted for second edition, 2009.
https://www.academia.edu/37765563/_Caribbean_Literature_and_Popular_Culture_in_Landscape_Format

Creative Publications

Camille's Lakou (Translation Excerpt) An English translation of two chapters from the novel, Moun Lakou written in French and Guadeloupean Kreyol by Marie Léticée. This excerpt won the 2022 Anne Frydman Translation Prize from The Hopkins Review. https://www.academia.edu/99772154/_Camilles_Lakou_Translation_Excerpt

Awards

2023 UCF Office of Research Mentoring Award with Amrita Ghosh
2022 Anne Frydman Translation Prize from The Hopkins Review for an excerpt of Camille's Lakou, my English translation of the novel, Moun Lakou by Guadeloupean author Marie Léticée
2017 U.S. Department of State, Fulbright Core Scholar, St. Kitts-Nevis
2016 Department of Education, Project Director for "Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development in the Caribbean" as part of America: Believing in Cultural Diversity through Latin American Studies Curriculum Development omnibus grant
2013 National Endowment for the Humanities, Scholar in Residence at Schomburg Center for "Translating Négritude Prose by Léon-Gontran Damas"
2012 Organization of American States, Consultant for FEMCIDI Partnership for Development Fund to Implement Hydroponic Model Facility in Nevis, Guyana, Barbados, and Trinidad
2010 National Science Foundation, PI for RAPID Research to Assess Mobile Technology and Inter-Agency Coordination in Disaster Relief and Recover Following the Haiti Earthquake

Course #	Course	Title	Mode	Days/Times	Syllabus
83618	AML3682	Ethnic Literature in America	Web-Based (W)	7:00 PM - 7:00 PM	Unavailable
Our goal during the semester will be to explore long-standing struggles over the meaning and ownership of the words "America" and "American" as these words are defined in Native American, African American, U.S. Latin@ and Asian American writing. The basic rhythm of the course will be to read a set of assigned texts, read any additional background information in the module, and attend class with a motivation to discuss the literary content and forms.
93241	LIT3437	Global Lit of Enviro Justice	Web-Based (W)	7:00 PM - 7:00 PM	Unavailable
Our course seeks to expose you to a range of writing and other non-print expressive forms that is global in scope, covers a spectrum of genres, raises important theoretical issues, and explores ethical problems rising from human interaction with the natural world. Organized through six two-week modules, we will read novels, memoirs, and poetry, look at videos and examples of community theatre, and listen to some relevant music from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Each module focuses on a specific geographic zone and genre, while also highlighting an important theoretical concept such as land and decolonization, subsistence farming and liberation ecology, the so-called “metabolic rift” and the Anthropocene, climate change and sea level rise, and environmental justice. Student assignments include small group discussion responses, an executive summary of their small group one time during the semester, an ethical engagement project with an interim and a final report, and a creative final exam with an artist’s statement.

Course #	Course	Title	Mode	Days/Times	Syllabus
19804	AML3615	Harlem, Haiti, and Havana	Web-Based (W)	7:00 PM - 7:00 PM	Unavailable
POST-1865 and DIVERSITY. Part one of the course focuses on three major figures-Langston Hughes, Jacques Roumain, and Nicolas Guillen--whose works announce a dialogue among black literary traditions in the Americas. Hughes, Roumain, and Guillen will be considered in light of their individual stylistic and thematic concerns, in light their unique triangular relationship as mutual friends and translators, in light of the literary movements which they helped to shape, and in light of their varied expressions of what critic Martha Cobb refers to as the "new folk ethos" in African diasporan writing across the hemisphere. In the second part of the course, we turn to works by Edwidge Danticat, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nancy Morejon with the aim of expanding the frame of reference beyond the canonical figures of Roumain, Hughes, and Guillen. Again, we will consider each writer in terms of her own stylistic and thematic concerns, as well as exploring how black women writers both echo and challenge the standards of literary value established by male-authored works. In tracing the evolution of "new folk ethos" expressions, we will pay particular attention to how writers-male and female-address issues such as nationalism, international diasporan linkages, the importance of popular music for literature, gender roles and stereotypes, economic class relations, folk religion, and revolutionary politics. Behind all of these issues, meanwhile, is the on-going attempt to define a progressive transnational black public sphere in the Americas. All works will be read in English, but students are encouraged to read in Spanish and French where possible, and to pursue issues of translation in their writing. Students will be required to complete a midterm, a final, 10 weekly discussion postings (500 words), and 2 executive summary assignments of their small group discussion (1000 words) during the semester.
12755	LIT4244	World Authors	Web-Based (W)	7:00 PM - 7:00 PM	Unavailable
POST-1865 (OR MAJOR AUTHOR) and DIVERSITY. Edwidge Danticat and Her Era... This course presents the work of Edwidge Danticat, one of the most renowned authors to come of age in the past several decades. Born in Haiti in 1969 and raised after age 11 in the United States, her work is emblematic of a generation marked by extensive migration, cross-cultural immersion in several linguistic and artistic traditions, political upheaval, and an ongoing search for the best means to document, intervene in, and celebrate this complex experience. We will study a representative slate of Danticat's highly-regarded fiction, though she has published in other genres including memoir, poetry, literary criticism, and artist interviews. As well, we will study classic offerings from the Haitian novel tradition by Jacques Roumain, an important predecessor with whom Danticat maintains an explicit dialogue, and Dimitry Elias Léger, who is a major figure to emerge in the past decade of post-earthquake writing from Haiti. Each module will also feature a relevant essay from Danticat's collection, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. Along the way, I will share music, painting and films that illuminate the Haitian and Haitian diasporan cultural context from which Danticat and her writing emerge.