Awa Sarr holds a PhD in French from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently Assistant Director for Academic Affairs at the African Studies Center, Michigan State University (MSU). She comes to MSU from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where she was Assistant Professor appointed jointly between the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures and the Africana Studies Program.  Her research focuses on francophone African literature, including colonial and postcolonial intellectual theories and movements and the francophone publishing system. 

Her publications include: Fraternal Oppression and the ‘Aesthetics of Vulgarity’ in Alain Mabanckou’s Broken Glass.” Unmasking The African Dictator: Essays On Postcolonial African Literature, Gichingiri Ndigirigi (ed.) “Au-delà du miroir: Réalisme-utopie et problématique de l’immigration dans Douceurs du bercail d’Aminata Sow Fall.” Nouvelles Etudes Francophones. “World-Identity in a Globalized World: What Role(s) for Francophone African Novelists? Francophone Cultures and Geographies of Identity. A.Murdoch and Z.Fagyal (eds). “Plagiat, négriat littéraire et institution littéraire.” Stealing the Fire: Adaptation, Appropriation, Plagiarism, Hoax in French and Francophone Literature and Film, James Day (ed.), French Literature Series. “La littérature-monde: un désir de nom.”  Littérature-monde en français: the literary politics of twenty-first-century France, Kamal Salhi (ed.), International Journal of Francophone Studies.