UAlbany Professor Profiles Adichie for Ms. Magazine Cover Story

UAlbany professor Janell Hobson's cover story on prominent author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the Summer 2014 issue of Ms. magazine is her second for the national publication.

ALBANY, N.Y. (July 21, 2014) -- Janell Hobson, associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University at Albany, wrote the cover story “Storyteller” for the Summer 2014 issue of Ms. magazine, the national feminist publication. The story details a conversation with Nigerian-born author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who was recently featured in a New York Times article about a new generation of African-born writers who are writing best-sellers and winning prestigious literary awards.

UAlbany associate professor of women's, gender and sexuality studies Janell Hobson. (Photo by Mark Schmidt)

This is Hobson’s second cover story for the magazine, following a profile on recording artist and actress Beyoncé.

“It’s been such a joy to write for a national publication like Ms. and bring prominent black women like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and pop star Beyoncé to the forefront of feminist politics,” said Hobson. “At a time when both young women and women of color doubt the relevance of feminism in their lives, writing articles about women they relate to, who embrace feminism, has been gratifying. It also allows me to reach a wider audience beyond academic readers and students who can afford to pay for a college education.”

Earlier this year, Adichie won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her third novel, Americanah. The books tells the story of Imfemelu, a young Nigerian woman and her lover Obinze, and the racial and cultural challenges she faces after she leaves home to study abroad in America.

Adichie’s second novel Half of a Yellow Sun has been adapted as a film that will be released this summer in the U.S. Her April 2013 TED talk “We Should All Be Feminists” has garnered more than a million views on YouTube; a section of that talk became a verse in the Beyoncé song “***Flawless” that was released in December 2013.

Adichie was a featured visiting writer at UAlbany’s New York State Writers Institute in 2007. Hobson earned a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Emory University as well as a master’s in the Teaching of English from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in English from the University of Georgia. Her books, Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Globalizing Gender and Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture, analyze the intersections of gender and race in popular culture. Hobson will become undergraduate director of women’s studies in the coming school year.

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