Jennifer D. Ryan-Bryant, Ph.D.

Jennifer Ryan-Bryant (she/her) joined the Buffalo State English Department in 2005. She teaches courses in American poetry, the American novel, Africana Studies, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Some of her recent courses include ENG 621: The 1619 Project, ENG 451: Black Horror, ENG 322: Toni Morrison, ENG 385: Gender and Sexuality in Literature, ENG 241: African American Literature Since 1940, ENG 231: Women in Literature—Educating Women, and WGS 201: Introduction to LGBTQAI2P+ Studies. In addition to co-leading two study-abroad trips for graduate students (2008 and 2017), she has directed thirteen master’s theses, four of which won the Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award. She is the recipient of the Caring Bengal Award (2023), the President’s Award for Excellence as a Graduate Research Mentor (2018), and the Dr. Muriel A. Howard Presidential Award for the Promotion of Respect for Equity and Campus Diversity (2015).

Jennifer’s first book, Post-Jazz Poetics: A Social History, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010, and her second book, Turning the Table: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Writing Between Them was published by Lexington Books in 2022. She has also published articles on anti-racist pedagogy, Black horror, lynching in American literature, Jayne Cortez, Wanda Coleman, Ezra Pound, Sonia Sanchez, and literary improvisation. She is currently at work on a study of the ways in which lynching has transformed American literary genres, entitled The Human in This Place: American Literatures of Lynching. She is also co-editing a companion to Wanda Coleman’s 100-poem sonnet sequence, Jazz Sonnets: A Guide to the American Sonnets of Wanda Coleman, with Dr. Lizzy LeRud of Minot State University.

Jennifer’s service commitments include Coordinator of the English MA program (2014-2023), the School of Arts & Sciences Personnel Committee (chair, fall 2023-present), the Africana Studies Core Committee, the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Core Committee, the President's Council on Equity and Campus Diversity, the PCECD Anti-Racist Initiatives Subcommittee, the inaugural Social Justice Cohort, several departmental committees, and manuscript reviews for various publishers.

Fall 2024 Office Hours

Wednesdays 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Thursdays 12:15 – 1:30 p.m.

Education

PhD, English, University of Iowa

MA, English, University of Iowa

BA, English and Music, University of Rochester