Professional Responsibilities

Liaison and resource faculty member for those in the Humanities and Social Sciences departments with a particular emphasis on African/African American Diaspora Studies and Middle Eastern Studies; develop and implement collection development policies for Africana Studies and Middle Eastern Studies; provide counseling for the integration of these materials into the curriculum, incorporating information literacy components into the curriculum, and creating assessment tools; and provide reference services in person and virtually.

Africana Resoureces Librarian/Curator

• Subject Specialist for Africana Studies
• Subject Specialist for  Race and Ethnic Studies
• Subject Specialist for Arabic/Middle Eastern Languages
  
• Subject Specialist for Africana Studies-Special Collections & Archives

Affiliations

University
     Graduate Faculty
     Race & Ethnic Studies Institute (RESI)
Professional
     Society of American Archivists (SAA), Elected Council member
     Academy of Certified Archivists
     American Library Association
          Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
                Africana Studies Librarians Section (AFAS)         
                Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS)          
          Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Roundtable (EMIERT)
     Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)

Research Interests

• African Diaspora
• Black women writers
• Women in Islam
• Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies
• Diversity in Academia

Education

Academy of Certified Archivists-1999-2010

Louisiana State University; Baton Rouge, Louisiana 
           Master of Library and Information Science-2000                      

Loyola University; New Orleans, Louisiana
           Bachelor of Liberal Studies degree Cum Laude, 1997
           Alpha Sigma Lambda-Delta Nu Chapter Honor Society

Selected Papers

• Hankins, Rebecca.  “Uncovering Black Feminist Writers, 1963-1990:  An Evaluation of their coverage in research tools" Reference & Users Services Quarterly, Vol. 48, #3, Spring 2009, pp. 270-286.
• Buchanan, Paula and Rebecca Hankins.  "Using Auto Racing as a Model to Teach Economics for Grades K-12."  Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research, Vol. 9, #1, 2008, pp. 3-12.
• Hankins, Rebecca, Melgoza, Pauline, Christina Seeger, and Gary Wan.  “Meeting Our Faculty Where They Conference:  A Texas A&M Model to Support Librarian Attendance at Subject Specific Conferences."  Public Services Quarterly, Volume 5, Issue 2, April 2009, pp. 98-113.
  

• Hankins, Rebecca.  “Marguerite Cartwright” and "Clarie Collins Harvey" in African American National Biography edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  Volume 2 (pp. 201-203) & Volume 4 (pp. 109-110), Oxford University Press, 2008.     

Book Chapters

• "African American Studies Collections” chapter in Developing Culturally Diverse Collections for the 21^st Century: Best Practices and Guidelines, edited by Myra Appel, ALA/EMIERT. Greenwood Publishing Groups’ Libraries Unlimited, 4/30/10, ISBN: 1-59158-598-8;9781591585985.
  
• "Jews of New Orleans:  An Archival Guide."  Simons, Andrew, Lester Sullivan and the Greater New Orleans Archivists (GNOA), section Jewish Holdings at the Amistad Research Center, 1998.
  

Collections

Africana Studies
The purpose of the Evans Library and Cushing Library & Archives Africana Collections are to support the curriculum, research, and instructional needs of the Africana Studies minor, and Africana Studies faculty.  The primary users are Africana Studies students, faculty, affiliated or visiting scholars, and community users who are doing research about the social, cultural, political, and economic expressions of people of African descent.  Africana Studies is the interdisciplinary and comparative study of the social, cultural, political, and economic expressions of people of African descent.  The term Africana Studies is sometimes used interchangeably with Black Studies, African-American Studies, and Afro-American Studies. The nomenclature change to Africana expresses the teaching and research of a broader geographical focus beyond North America which includes and not limited to the Caribbean, North America, Latin America and Africa hence the study of the African Diaspora.  As an interdisciplinary field Africana Studies requires the collection of research across disciplines to adequately build a research collection about people of African descent. Some areas of Africana scholarship include literature, linguistics, history, political science, religion, sociology, anthropology, economics, labor, performing/visual arts, military history, psychology, and science.