Margaret Alma Cox, PhD
Margaret Alma Cox was born in Carriacou, Grenada and grew up in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Baruch College, a Master of Arts in English from Brooklyn College, and a PhD in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is an Associate Professor of English at Hampton University.
Research Interests
Margaret Alma Cox is a scholar of African Diaspora Literature, Caribbean Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. ​ Her article, “Buchi Emecheta: Re-imagining of the African Feminism Self” (2010) calls attention to matriarchal oral traditions of storytelling in Nigerian culture as represented by Buchi Emecheta's oeuvre, including The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Kehinde (1994).
In her dissertation “Caribbean “Islands of the Mind”: Reshaping the Ocularity of the Self” (2016), Dr. Cox presents her coined concept, the ocularity of the self, which refers to how individuals constantly reconfigure their lens to the extent that the restructuring of their image results in acceptance of societal ocular dominance. Dr. Cox further articulates this concept of the ocularity of the self from an African Americanist vantage point in her article “Alice Walker and Claudia Rankine: Reclaiming the Ocularity of the Self.” (2017).
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Publications
Cox, Margaret, and Patricia West, editors. Great Works of African American Literature. Affordable Georgia, 2022.
“Alice Walker and Claudia Rankine: Reclaiming the Ocularity of the Self” Critical Insights: Civil Rights. Comp. and ed. Christopher Varlack. Amenia: Greyhouse, 2017.
Cox, Margaret. Caribbean "Islands of the Mind": Reshaping the Ocularity of the Self, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Ann Arbor, 2016. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/caribbean-islands-mind-reshaping-ocularity-self/docview/1825677868/se-2?accountid=13713.