Skip to main content

Rose A. Sackeyfio

Position: Associate Professor Department: English

Contact Info

Office: 224 Hall Patterson Phone: 336-750-2026 Fax: 336-750-2180

Biography

Rose A. Sackeyfio has taught in the Department of English and Liberal Studies at Winston Salem
State University for almost three decades. Her academic qualifications include Ph.D. (1992), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, M.S. (1982) Hunter College, City University of New York, and a B.A. (1971) Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

Her research and teaching are situated at the nexus of inter-disciplinary scholarship on literatures of African and African-Diaspora women, Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies, and African Migration. Her publications and scholarly pursuits explore various aspects of the lives of African and African Diaspora women in the global arena. She is the author of African Women Narrating Identity: Local and Global Journeys of the Self (Routledge, 2024) and West African Women in the Diaspora: Narratives of Other Spaces, Other Selves (Routledge, 2021). She is editor of a volume of critical essays, Women Writing Diaspora in the 21st Century (Lexington Books, 2021) and co-editor of Emerging Perspectives on Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo (Lexington Books 2017). She is the Guest Editor of the special issue of the Journal of Post-Colonial Writing that examines “The African Novel in the 21st Century, New Vistas of Postcolonial Discourse” (Sept. 2024). Her publications include many book chapters in edited collections and peer-reviewed articles in African Literature Today and the Journal of the African Literature Association.

Her commitment to innovative research and curriculum development in cultural studies, and women’s writing has been funded by several grants. At Winston Salem State University she was Co-Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities Initiative: Integrating India into the Liberal Arts Curriculum (2011-2014). The WSSU Research Initiation Proposal Grant funded the documentary, Building Bridges: The Untold African Story (2012) that examines the historical and cultural linkages between Ghana and the African Diaspora through memory, identity and reconnection in the 21st century. She was awarded the University of North Carolina India Technology Learning Grant (2015) to develop a Synchronous Video/Technology course on cross-cultural themes from Africa and the African Diaspora, Indian and South Asian literatures, and culture between WSSU and Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi, India. Dr. Sackeyfio was the recipient of the UNC Curriculum Grant (2015) to research Chinese Women’s Literature at Yunnan Minzu University in China. Rose A. Sackeyfio’s scholarly engagements include numerous presentations in the USA and international conferences in Europe, Africa and Asia. She was a visiting scholar at Yunnan Minzu China for five weeks (2016), where she presented lectures on Feminism, Cultural Identity in the Global Age, Post-Colonial Literature and New Perspectives on Literary Criticism. She has also presented lectures at five universities in India. In July 2025, Dr. Sackeyfio was awarded a Fellowship from the Carolina Asia Center at UNC Chapel Hill, USA to research literary representations of China-Africa encounters. Other current projects include a monograph, Ghanaian Women Writers on the Literary Stage and In Their Own Voices in the Twenty-first Century. Dr. Sackeyfio remains committed to international education as a path to building bridges across cultures in an era of globalization and transformation.

Educational Background

  • PhD, 1992, Ahmadu Bello University
  • MS, 1982, Hunter College C.U.N.Y.
  • BA, 1971, Brooklyn College C.U.N.Y.

Research and Projects 

The National Endowment for the Humanities India Area Studies Award at WSSU is a rewarding opportunity for professional development and research into the literature of Indian and other south Asian women writers. An important outcome of this new research interest is the articulation of strong similarities between African and Indian women's lives. These are evident in culturally defined roles for women, values, customs and practices and Hindu religion. . Further, I have made inroads in researching Indian, Nepali and Tibetan women's writing. These new works will form a unit on South Asian women's writing in ENG 2306 Women's Writing in a Global Context that will be taught in spring 2014. In addition, a joint publication on Hindu and African Goddesses is underway between myself and Dr. Sasi Kiran. In sum, first hand exposure to a new culture has afforded multiple rewards and enhanced my knowledge and research into women's lives as expressed in their literature.