Cynthia Ward - Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Hawai`i Manoa. PhD. Stanford U. Modern Thought and Literature. I've published articles on oral traditions and on African culture, literature, and performances in journals such as PMLA, Text and Performance Quarterly, Research in African Literatures, Modern Fiction Studies, and Politics and Culture, as well as in edited book collections. I've presented my work on cognition, aesthetics, and visual culture at numerous conferences, including recent meetings held in South Africa and Egypt. My two manuscripts in progress reflect my interests in West African culture, popular culture, and visual cognition studies (merging humanistic and scientific approaches).