Timothy S. Lyle, Ph.D.

Dr. Timothy Lyle teaches first-year writing courses, introductions to the humanities, theory/method, interdisciplinary upper division courses and graduate seminars that engage African American, American and African diasporan literatures and cultures, especially through the lens of queer theory, race studies, digital humanities and disability studies. He specializes in contemporary African American literature and culture, with a particular focus on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and disability.

• “Fucking with Dignity: Public Sex, Queer Intimate Kinship, and how the AIDS Epidemic Bathhouse Closures Constituted a Dignity Taking.” The Chicago-Kent Law Review, vol. 92, no. 3, 2017. (Co-Authored with Dr. Stephen Engel, Politics, Bates College)
• “Tryin’ to Scrub That ‘Death Pussy’ Clean Again: The Pleasures of Domesticating HIV/AIDS in Pearl Cleage’s Fiction.” African American Review, vol. 50, no. 2, 2017, pp. 153-168.
• “‘She Came to Liberate’: Janet Mock and Revolutionary Love among Transgender Women of Color.” College Language Association Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, 2016, 225-243.
• “‘Still Playin Wid Dem Barbie Dolls? Never Mind, Don’t Answer That’: Tyler Perry’s Stage as a Lonely Place for Black Queers” Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre and Performance, vol. 3, no. 1, 2016, continuumjournal.org. Accessed 23 Aug. 2017.
• “In the Life and In the Spirit: Homoerotic Spirituality in African American Literature: A Review” College Language Association Journal, vol. 59, no. 1, 2015, pp. 96-100. College Language Association.
• “An Interview with Janet Mock.” Callaloo, vol. 38, no. 3, 2015, pp. 502-508.
• “Prolonging Last Call: Jamaica Kincaid’s Voyeuristic Pleasures in My Brother.” The Journal of West Indian Literature, vol. 22, no. 1, 2013, pp. 33-62. The University of the West Indies Press.
• “Check with Yo’ Man First; Check with Yo’ Man: Tyler Perry Appropriates Drag as a Tool to Re-circulate Patriarchal Ideology” Callaloo, vol. 34, no. 3, 2011, pp. 943-958. The Johns Hopkins University Press

Dr. Lyle specializes in contemporary African American literature and culture, with a particular focus on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and disability. Informed by a feminist pedagogy and steeped in a tradition of African American and diasporan cultural practices, he teaches first-year writing courses, introductions to the humanities, theory/method, interdisciplinary upper division courses and graduate seminars that engage African American, American and African diasporan literatures and cultures, especially through the lens of queer theory, race studies, digital humanities and disability studies.

In his written work, he triangulates critical conversations in race studies, queer theory and disability studies—all of which are slow to include the others. He has most recently published work on Tyler Perry as a playwright, on Janet Mock and trans women of color writers and on HIV/AIDS narratives post-1995. His forthcoming book-length projects explore HIV/AIDS representations through the lens of narrative pleasure and introduce the burgeoning literary histories of transgender women of color. To that end, he is currently mining the “In the Life Archives” at the Schomburg Center for Black Cultural Research, which is its newest addition that explores LGBTQ folks in the black community.

He is currently the Chair of the Committee on Diversity and the Faculty Advisor for Gael Pride.