Our Fellows

SA Smythe is a poet-performer, translator, and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information (iSchool) at the University of Toronto. They previously served as Assistant Professor in the Departments of Gender Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where they were affiliated with the Black Feminism Initiative, the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, and the Institute for Inequality and Democracy. They are the editor of the “Troubling the Grounds: Global Configurations of Blackness, Nativism, and Indigeneity” special issue of Postmodern Culture (2021). Their monograph, Where Blackness Meets the Sea: On Crisis, Culture, and the Black Mediterranean is forthcoming, as is their poetry collection titled proclivity. Dr. Smythe’s work focuses on the liberatory aspects of Black belonging beyond borders, specifically with regards to trans embodiment and poetics, citizenship/migration, colonial history, and the literary imagination. They organize with students and other comrades in the Cops Off Campus Coalition and other abolitionist/anti-carceral groups across Turtle Island and in Europe.