Representative: Soraya Mekerta

Director of the African Diaspora and the World Program and Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Spelman College
President, Spelman College Faculty Council
B.A. and M.A., Université Paul Valéry M.A. and Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Spelman College Board of Trustees: Elected 2011
City of Residence: Atlanta, Georgia

At Spelman College, Dr. Soraya Mekerta teaches a variety of discipline-based and interdisciplinary courses, including French language and literature, Francophone and African literature and film, African Diaspora and the World, and occasionally, Introduction to Women Studies.

Her scholarly presentations and publications are interdisciplinary and focus on French and Francophone literature, North African literature in French, the North-African community in France, the Francophone Caribbean, the African Diaspora, and the greater Arab world and Middle East. She has published articles in scholarly journals and books (nationally and internationally) on topics which include the concept of destiny in Islam using the fields of Arab Philosophy, Theology and Cultural Studies. She has also published on feminism using an Islamic lens and focusing on the concepts of justice and fairness in Islam, as well as on ancestral memory and Diaspora connections in the Border Zones, North-African immigrant literature in French, and Algerian literature in French. In addition, she has published on issues related to pedagogy and methodology in language teaching/learning using the Rassias Method.

Dr. Mekerta has received Spelman College’s Vulcan Teaching Excellence Award and is listed in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. She is Deputy Vice President of the Executive Board for the African Literature Association. Dr. Mekerta is also a Fellow of the Oxford Round Table (Oxford, England) and serves on the Leadership Council for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Thoughts on why she chose to serve on the Spelman College Board of Trustees: I was elected by Spelman College faculty to serve as President of the Faculty Council. I am quite passionate about justice and fairness and equality and equal representation, and I believe in fair and shared governance. Also, I believe that when one is a member of a community, in this case, the Spelman community, one has a responsibility to serve and be an engaged citizen of the community. I look forward to representing the voices of those who elected me, and I accept the charge with enthusiasm and humility.