Abdelkader Cheref | Humanities and Social Sciences | SIU

Dr. Abd-el-Kader CHEREF is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at SIU which he has joined this 2024 Fall semester. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and Africana Studies trom the University of Exeter in the UK. Previously, he earned an MA in Atrican American Literature from the University of Nottingham (UK) and the University of Oran in Algeria.

His anti-racist and justice-oriented teaching and research interests center on 20th and 21st century Anglophone and Francophone postcolonial African literatures, post-WWII African American literature, African cinema, colonization, decolonization, as well as Pan-Africanism.

His teaching philosophy is centered around the idea that all students are welcome in his classroom where diverse standpoints, ideas, and voices are appreciated.

Before coming to SIU, Dr. CHEREF taught African American literature at the University of Oran in Algeria; EFL/ESL in UAE; Comparative Literature at the University of Limerick in Ireland; French and Francophone African literature at the University of Connecticut and The State University of New York (SUNY) at Potsdam.

He is the author of Gender and Identity in North Africa: Postcolonialism and Feminism in Maghrebi Women' s Literature (2010). And as a freelance journalist he has written commissioned pieces for The National, and The Italian Insider, The Washington Post, DAWN, and recently The New Arab. His articles deal primarily with politics in the MENA region, Afro-Arab relations, Human Rights, and democratization.

Professor Cheref's academic and public writing has appeared in numerous venues. He also regularly presents his work at professional, academic meetings. His ongoing scholarship takes a postcolonial and deconstructive approach to African American, and Anglophone and Francophone African Literatures.

As an African-centered scholar, and having grown up in Algeria during the era of independence, nation-building, and Algerian nationalism, Dr. CHEREF has tried to stay true to his " revolutionary" upbringing. He hopes to bring the spirit of Kwame Nkrumah, WEB Du Bois, Sheikh Anta Diop, Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Thomas Sankara, and other leaders and activist intellectuals, to bear on his work as Professor of Africana Studies at SIU.

When not teaching or writing, Dr. CHEREF can usually be found in the library, running, hiking, swimming, or cooking something that almost always includes lots of olive oil, garlic, and Cheddar Cheese.