BIRMINGHAM, AL — Dellita L. Martin-Ogunsola, Ph.D., has been named interim director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) African-American Studies Program. Martin-Ogunsola’s appointment will become effective July 1.

She will step in for Adeniyi Coker, Ph.D., who will become the E. Desmond Lee Professor of African/African-American Studies and a professor of theatre and media studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. A national search for a new director will be conducted this year.

Martin-Ogunsola is a professor of Spanish in the UAB Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. She has focused her research and publications on the Spanish, French, English and Portuguese writers of African descent in the Americas. She specializes in Latin American literature with an emphasis on authors of African ancestry in the Caribbean. She has published several books and numerous articles in scholarly journals.

Martin-Ogunsola joined the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures in 1976 as an assistant professor. She was chairwoman of the department from 1993 to 2002.

She is a 1968 graduate of Louisiana State University in New Orleans. She earned both her master’s degree in Hispanic literature in 1971 and her doctorate in romance languages and literature in 1975 from Ohio State University.