Dr. Umeh received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she was a graduate fellow in the Department of African Languages and Literatures, specializing in African women writers in the second half of the twentieth century. The former Chair of the Department of English at Anambra State College of Education (Awka, Nigeria), Dr. Umeh has received PSC-CUNY awards and a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Award in Feminist Theory and Literary Criticism. At John Jay, she has taught Literatures of the African World, Research Methods, Writing Composition, Western Literatures and Modern Literature. She has authored critical and theoretical essays that appear in journals and books throughout Africa, Europe and North America. She is also the editor of two anthologies, Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emechta (1996) and Emerging Perspectives on Flora Nwapa (1998), published by Africa World Press; she is contributing editor to Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing (Routledge 2001).