Meina Yates-Richard is a scholar of 20th- and 21st -Century African American literature, African diasporic literature, and American literature and culture.

In 2016, Meina successfully defended her dissertation, "Echoes of the Future-Past: Slavery & Sonic Testimony in African American Literature 1845-Present," under the direction of Prof. Nicole Waligora-Davis.

In the same year, she also won the 2016 Norman Foerster Prize for the best essay published annual in American Literature, awarded for her essay “‘WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER’S NAME?’: Maternal Disavowal and the Reverberating Aesthetic of Black Women’s Pain in Black Nationalist Literature.”

After graduating from Rice, Meina Yates-Richard took a position as Assistant Professor of English at Syracuse University. Meina is the recipient of the 2018-2019 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and starting Fall 2018, she will be Assistant Professor of African American Literature and Culture at Emory University.