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Dana Murphy

Assistant Professor of Black Studies and English
B.A., University of California, Berkeley, 2011; M.A., University of California, Irvine, 2015; Ph.D., 2018. Caltech, 2021-.

Profile

On leave academic year 2024–25.

Dana Murphy (she/her) is an academic and writer of creative and literary-critical works that endeavor to practice care within critical and liberative contexts. Her academic essays appear in African American Review, The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research, CLA Journal, and Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International. Her book on Phillis Wheatley's work and legacy is under contract with Duke University Press.

Murphy teaches first-year humanities courses on modern and contemporary multicultural and multiethnic literatures and cultures, and advanced humanities courses on global and international literatures and cultures of diaspora and of speculative futures.

Research Summary
Black Study; Expressive Culture; Literature in English or English Translation; Poetry and Poetics; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Feminist Science and Technology Studies
Selected Awards
  • Stanford Humanities Center External Faculty Fellowship, Stanford University, 2024–25
  • Appreciation Award, Caltech Center for Inclusion and Diversity (CCID), Caltech, 2024
External Affiliations

Featured News

A Conversation with Dana Murphy
November 08, 2021
Dana Murphy, assistant professor of English and Black Studies
Read more news

Selected Publications


Academic Essays

"Imagining Black Steminist Care: Nnedi Okorafor's Binti." In "Black Women's Contemporary Speculative Fiction," edited by Susana M. Morris and Michelle M. Wright. Special issue, The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research 54, no. 2 (2024): 58–69.

"‘She Will Remember Everything': Black Diasporic Feminist Healing Roots in Cristina García's Dreaming in Cuban." Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International 12, no. 2 (2023): 5–27.

"Praisesong for Margaret Walker's Jubilee and the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival." African American Review 53, no. 4 (2020): 299–313.

"Black Feminist Hoodoo: Ntozake Shange's Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo." In "‘sing a black girl's song…sing a song of her life': Ntozake Shange," edited by Trimiko Melancon. Special issue, CLA Journal 62, no. 2 (2019): 178–92.