Mahaliah Little, Ph.D., C'2013

Biography

Faculty Member Since 2025

Dr. Mahaliah Ayana Little is an assistant professor of women's studies and Black queer and sexuality studies in the Comparative Women's Studies Department . 

Themes of Black feminism, Black sexuality studies, pop culture, literary studies, and interrogations of sexual violence animate Mahaliah Little's teaching, publications, research, and presentations. She is passionate about feminist pedagogy, media literacy, and the teaching of writing. Prior to joining the Comparative Women's Studies Program at Spelman College, Dr. Little served as an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies and an affiliate faculty member for the Culture and Theory Program at the University of California, Irvine. She is a proud alumna of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Ohio State University, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Spelman College, and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and Graduate Programs Initiative.

Dr. Little's manuscript-in-progress, "Reconfigurations: Race, Sexual Violence, and Representation," interrogates how Black women’s intimate lives after instances of sexual violence are represented across a range of media, and adds to a growing body of Black feminist literary and cultural criticism theorizing the relationship between violence, autonomy, and Black women’s sexuality.

Her interest in literary depictions of Black women's sexuality and experiences with sexual trauma is also reflected in her work with Drs. Suzanne Edwards, Mary Foltz, and Maxine Montgomery's NEH-funded digitization of Gloria Naylor's personal archive. Her chapter, "Trauma and Arousal in the Archive: Black Women's Sexuality, Gloria Naylor, and Bailey's Cafe," is part of the forthcoming "Critical Essays on Gloria Naylor Anthology"(University of Mississippi Press). It explores the relationship between Black women’s experiences of sexual trauma and exertions of erotic autonomy in Gloria Naylor’s 1992 novel Bailey’s Café, situating the characters Sadie, Eve, Esther, and Peaches (Mary) with archival materials such as Naylor’s correspondence with readers about Black sexuality and queerness, her research on sex work during her 1988 Guggenheim Fellowship at Cornell University, her notes on character design for Bailey’s Café, and political ephemera related to pornography and activism. Naylor’s enigmatic stance on the Sex Wars – the mainstream feminist debate de jour of the 1980s and early 1990s – only enriches her literary explorations of Black women’s sexuality in Bailey’s Café.

“Trauma and Arousal in the Archive: Black Women’s Sexuality in Bailey’s Café” details how characters from Bailey’s Café – in conversation with archival materials from the late 1980s and early 1990s – suggest that Gloria Naylor maintained a dynamic and nuanced theorization of Black women’s sexuality that defied mainstream (read: white) feminist concepts of the era and was forward-looking in its capaciousness. Check out some of Dr. Little’s work without a paywall:

See “Being Toward Trauma: Theorizing Post-Violence Sexuality,” published in Rejoinder: An Online Journal Published by the Institute for Research on Women. 
Dr. Little volunteered with a transformational organization, Healing Broken Circles, Inc., that connects volunteers with opportunities to learn with incarcerated colleagues. Her experience teaching in prisons as a doctoral candidate galvanized her commitment to serving underrepresented students.

Dr. Little is a 2013 cum laude graduate of Spelman College. Her mother, Deborah Walker-Little, is a graduate of the Class of 1975. Her great-grandmother, Ida Barkley Brogsdale, was a graduate of Spelman Seminary's 1903 English Preparatory Department. While teaching at public research universities was rewarding, and her presence on campus was a lifeline for the racial, ethnic, and gender minority students who relied on her, Dr. Little is thrilled to have found her way home to an HBCU and her beloved alma mater. 

Websites

Personal Website

Academia.edu Profile

 

Professional Societies

National Women's Studies Association

Association for the Study of African American Life and History

American Studies Association

 

Education

Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2021, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

M.A., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 2016, Women's and Gender Studies

B.A., Spelman College, 2013, English

Select Publications

Little, Mahaliah A. “Being Toward Trauma: Theorizing Post-Violence Sexuality.” Rejoinder: Special Issue – Trauma – An Online Journal Published by the Institute for Research on Women, vol. 7, no. 1, 2022.

Fair, Freda L. and Mahaliah A. Little. “Erotic Illegibility and Desire in Representations of Black Sexuality – Erotic Representation in Underground.” American Quarterly, vol. 71 no. 1, 2019, p. 151-159.

Little, Mahaliah A. “Why Don’t We Love These Hoes?: Black Women, Popular Culture, and the Contemporary Hoe Archetype.” Black Female Sexualities. Ed. Trimiko Melancon and Joanne M. Braxton. New Brunswick: Rutgers New Brunswick, 2015. 89-99.

Little, Mahaliah A. “Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being: Review.” Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, vol. 6, no. 1, 2017, pp. 137–140.

Recent Awards and Honors

2024-2025 UC Underrepresented Scholars Fellow

2024 Dr. DeGallow Professor of the Year Award Nominee

2021-2022 Carter G. Woodson Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Virginia

2020-21 American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellow

Research Interests

Sexual violence narratives, Black feminist theory, Black sexuality studies, Black queer studies, literary and cultural criticism, Black women's literature (fiction and memoir), popular culture and contemporary media 

 

 

Recent Grants

2025 Developmental Editing Grant for Early Career Scholars

2024 UCI Building Intellectual Communities Grant

2021-2022 Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies (BBQ+) Book Development Summer Institute

2021 SSRC Mellon Mays Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant