James Madison University

Department of Foreign Languages,
Literatures, and Cultures

Dr. Besi Brillian Muhonja

muhonjbx@jmu.edu

Keezell B14

Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Binghamton University

Dr. Brillian Besi Muhonja is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures at James Madison University, Virginia, USA. She holds a PhD in Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture from Binghamton University as well as a Masters degree in Theater, and a Graduate Certificate in Feminist Theory.

She is an American Association of University Women Fellow and a Madison Teaching Fellow. Her research, publication and teaching areas include Gender Studies/Feminist Theory, African and African American Feminisms, Indigenous and Contemporary Kenyan Cultures, and Language.

Her recent publications include Emotions, Displacement and the New Kenyan; Up and Down Purity, winner of a feminist scholarship award; Disneyfication and the Erasure of the African Princess; She Loved and She Ruled That Kitchen: Space and Autonomy in Kenyan Societies; Ogu Ndem: Aggressive Silence; and Notes Towards a Research in African Feminist Theater.

She is curator and editor of the Kiswahili Story Database, which publishes 4 issues annually. She serves as a gender, culture, creativity, media and education consultant for various organizations in East Africa and the USA.