Dr. Andrea Y. Adomako is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at New York University. She received her PhD from Northwestern University in the Department of African American Studies and holds graduate certificates in Gender and Sexuality Studies and African Studies. She was also a Presidential Fellow, the most prestigious fellowship awarded to graduate students at Northwestern for outstanding research and leadership.
Additionally, Adomako holds a M.A. from the American Studies program at Purdue University and a B.A. from the Department of Africana Studies and Human Rights at Barnard College. Her interdisciplinary scholarship spans the fields of Black girlhood, Black feminism(s), childhood studies, literary criticism, and Black political thought.
Her work focuses on narratives of Black girlhood in 19th and 20th century Black youth literature in the United States and Ghana. She examines how Black writers have questioned and reworked theories of race, gender, and intimacy through figurations of Black girlhood. Adomako argues that the politics of Black friendship plays out in the creative relationships brought to life by Black authors. She also demonstrates how Black girls’ friendships can redefine and reconsider the ways difference impacts sociality. Drawing on feminist and literary criticism, Adomako conducts interdisciplinary research on figures and texts from the United States and Ghana to account for the shifting terrain of political commitments within Black Diasporic literary movements.
Working with youth organizations such as the Chicago Freedom School and sitting on the board of the Akoma Institute, Andrea is committed to relationship building as a political commitment and intellectual practice.
Through her scholarship, teaching, and community engagement, Adomako encourages future scholars to critically engage with the category of childhood as a site of influence.
Adomako’s work continues to be supported by the Alumnae Association of Barnard College, the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon Mays Fellowship program, and the Graduate School at Northwestern University.
Andrea Y. Adomako 