Carlyn Ena Ferrari

Carlyn Ferrari is an Assistant Professor of African American literature and affiliate faculty in Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and African and African American Studies at Seattle University. She teaches courses on African American literature and culture and Black feminisms. She is a 2023-2024 Mellon Fellow in Democracy and Landscape Studies at Harvard Research Institute Dumbarton Oaks. Her first book, Do Not Separate Her from Her Garden: Anne Spencer’s Ecopoetics (University of Virginia Press, 2022) is a study of poet and civil rights activist Anne Spencer’s environmental ethos. In her research, she explores how Black women theorize the natural world and considers the intersections between Black feminist thought and literary ecocriticism. Her essays have appeared in College Language Association Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Black Perspectives, Consequence Forum, and Religion Dispatches.  Her scholarship has earned support from The Institute for Citizens and Scholars Career Enhancement Fellowship, William A. Elwood Fellowship in Civil Rights and African-American Studies at the University of Virginia, the Joyce Avrech Berkman Endowed Fund for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship, and the W. E. B. Du Bois Center Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She hails from the San Francisco Bay Area and holds Ph.D. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Outside of the classroom, she lives for Janet Jackson and Prince. She is a writer and a thinker at heart, so you can find her lost in thought and meditating on the brilliance of Rhythm Nation and Paisley Park.