Janice S. Spleth, Ph.D.
Professor Spleth received a BS in Education from the University of Arkansas and a Ph.D. in French from Rice University.
Professor Spleth has taught French
and Foreign Literatures in Translation at all levels at WVU and
received Outstanding Teaching Awards from the Eberly College of Arts and
Sciences and the WVU Foundation. She has
been a Faculty Associate in both Africana Studies and Women’s Studies and
served as Interim Director of the Center for Women’s Studies
2008-2009. Her field of
specialization is African literature, primarily in French. Her publications
include two books and several articles on the Senegalese poet-statesman Léopold
Sédar Senghor. She spent a year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaïre)
as a Fulbright Scholar, and her research on Central African literature appears
in the French Literature Series, The Literary Griot, Matatu, Research in
African Literatures, Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, and the Journal
of the African Literature Association. Her current research project analyzes
narratives dealing with the place of women in Africa’s civil wars and has
resulted in published articles or book chapters on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
Tanella Boni, Edwidge Danticat, Aminatta Forna, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye,
Leonora Miano, Yolande Mukagasana, and Fanta Regina Nacro, She is an active
member of the African Literature Association and co-edited two volumes of its
annual: Interdisciplinary Dimensions of African Literature (1985) and The
Cultural Dynamics of Globalization and African Literature (2016). She was
elected to serve as president of the organization in 2010. She has
been a member of the editorial board for the journal Research in African
Literatures, and in 2006, she was elected to the Executive Committee of the
African Literature Division of the MLA. She held the Armand E. and Mary W.
Singer Professorship in the Humanities at WVU 2006-2012. In 2019, she was named Benedum Distinguished Scholar in Humanities and the Arts for
“excellence in creative research.”