Dr Fatoumata Keita is an assistant professor of English at the Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, in Bamako, Mali. Her teaching and research focus is Africana women’s social and political activism as reflected in their autobiographical and fictional writings. Her recent research explores tropes of struggle, survival and empowerment in Africana women Nobel laureates’ writings. Her research interests also encompass gender and post-colonial studies, Afrocentricity, African and African American literature, and peace- and security- building in Africa. She earned a doctorate in American literature from L’Université Gaston Berger, in Saint-Louis, Senegal, in 2014. She was a 2017–2018 Fulbright research scholar at the Columbia University Institute of African Studies in New York.