The following are a sampling of the courses taught by Dr. Parker. Partial syllabi and/or reading lists are available where indicated.

Sink Your Teeth Into It! Black Vampires 

This undergraduate course looks at the shifting nature of the Black vampires in film and literature and explores how historical contexts and social concerns influence Black writers’ constructions of Black vampires. We engage a play, short stories, novels, and film that span a variety of literary designations including gothic fiction, urban erotica, street literature, emancipatory narratives, Blaxploitation , horror comedy, and magical realism​. Access Partial Syllabus.
Different Worlds: Octavia E. Butler and the 1980s
A course devoted to advanced critical analysis and the preparation, revision, and virtual presentation of an in-depth research project. This seminar will meet those goals by exploring the different worlds in Butler’s fiction that was published in the 1980s. “Different Worlds” offers one avenue to explore the 1980s through the work of one person: Octavia E. Butler, the Black woman heralded as the mother of African American science fiction. 
Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
WGSS 2100  is an "Intersectional approach to introduce contemporary issues and historical, social, and theoretical contexts of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies." This course explores the nexus among gender, race, class, sexuality, nation, disability, and more through case study, literature, and film.
Black Autobiography & Memoir 
This course chronologically explores Black Life Writing with attention to those works that interrogate the themes of “freedom” conceived broadly, examining how liberation intersects with gender, gender identity, disability, weight, enslavement, sexuality, violence, fashion--and more. This course requires our participation in the Life Writing tradition as both outsiders and insiders. To experience Life Writing from the outside, requires the completion of a Book Review, and to experience Life Writing as an insider, requires the submission of an Autoethnography. Access Partial Syllabus.
Afrofuturism: Introduction to African American Literature
This course explores African American literature from its earliest iterations to the 21st century with Afrofuturism as its guiding light to investigate how African American literature has always been forward-thinking, future-oriented, and visionary. This course considers the varied ways Black American writers have always been concerned with creating new, alternative worlds. Throughout the semester, we will grapple with different understandings of Afrofuturism to read, situate, and interrogate Black  writers’ works.  Access Partial Syllabus.

Big Fang Theory

Georgia Southern University | Graduate Course

This course is a graduate seminar with a focus on criticism and theory. In this course we will read Black vampire literature, exploring various theories and criticisms focused on gender and sexuality and their intersections with race, disability, beauty, and more. 

Reimagining the Sacred in African American Literature

Georgia Southern University | Graduate Course

From Slave Spirituals to Kendrick Lamar, from ancient African kingdoms to the New Jim Crow era, Black peoples’ relationships to Christianity is nothing new. This course explores centuries of Black people’s biblical appropriations through literary form.

Africana Feminisms: Origins, Legacies
​
Hope College | Undergraduate Course

This course explores the varied experiences of Africana women across the African Diaspora and understand how such experiences shaped the development of Africana women’s experiences in the West and outside of it. We begin in the late-eighteenth century understanding emergences of Africana women’s movement in Haiti, Western Europe, and the Americas more broadly. From there, we explore the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies. Next, we examine Africana spiritualties, focusing on Islam and Christianity in Senegalese, Nigerian, and American contexts. Following, we explore how “medical care” in France and the United States leads to the “fetishizing” of Africana women’s bodies. Finally, we turn our attention to the notion of Africana Women in the United States as both citizens and refugees in the last unit, “Citizenship”

Academic Writing: Feminisms

​Hope College | Undergraduate Course

 In “Academic Writing: Feminisms” students will become acclimated with writing for and conversing with a college-educated audience through their research-oriented exploration of feminist perspectives in the United States and abroad. The focus of this writing workshop is, of course, to help you become a more effective writer.  Part of becoming an effective writer means understanding that writing should be multimodal or WOVEN (Written, Oral, Visual, Electronic, and Nonverbal).