Kwakiutl Dreher
Dr. Kwakiutl L. Dreher () was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. She earned a Bachelor's Degree in English from the University of South Carolina-Columbia and her Master's Degree from Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Dreher received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Riverside. She is a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority.
Her research interests include African American literature since 1970, including auto/biography, film, visual, and popular culture, and mass marketed popular literature (romance). She currently completed her manuscript entitled Dancing on the White Page: Black Women Entertainers Writing Autobiography for SUNY press. She has published "A Eulogy for Tyrell Musgrove: The Disremembered Child in Marc Forster's "Monster's Ball" in Film Criticism 29:1 Fall 2004; three book reviews for the Quarterly Review of Film and Video: Paula J. Massood, Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2003; Melvin Donalson, Black Directors in Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas, 2003; and forthcoming Judylyn Ryan, Spirituality as Ideology in Black Women's Film and Literature. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, P, 2005; and, two encyclopedia entries: "Children" and "The Oprah Winfrey Book Club" in The Toni Morrison Encyclopedia. Ed. Elizabeth Beaulieu. Westport: Greenwood, 2003.
A performance artist, Dr. Dreher has guest performed in the Lincoln area community as poet for the National Council of Negro Women and African American Creativity Forum, song stylist for "Live the Dream" Martin Luther King Birthday Celebration, " Angels Theater Company Summer Stock 2, and "A Taste of Harlem." She produced her one-woman show "In a Smoke-Filled Room" in Riverside, and the play was selected as a finalist for production by the Women's Theater Initiative-Cincinnati, Ohio. She also is Editor of the NAACP-Lincoln Branch newsletter, and has served on the Lincoln Community Playhouse Reading Committee. She credits her community in Columbia, especially her church with providing a strong support system which facilitated her pursuit of all of her artistic and academic interests.