Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar
she/her
Kelsey Desir is a postdoctoral scholar in Boston University’s Society of Fellows. She received her Ph.D. at Duke University. She specializes in African American and African Diaspora literature and expressive culture. Her interdisciplinary work lives in the intersections of Black feminist theory and health humanities studies. She examines how Black women interrogate institutions of medicine and conceptualize wellness in their literary and visual art.
In her project, Discursive Bodies: Black Women, Healing, and the Poetics of Care, she elucidates how crucial Black women’s cultural production is to analyzing the inequities of healthcare and imagining alternative ways of healing. Engaging a variety of genres and media, including but not limited to novels, poetry, short stories, and mixed media paintings, her work demonstrates the multimodal ways the humanities can be used to deepen our understanding of health and wellness. In Discursive Bodies, Kelsey is invested in unpacking the affective and social elements of health and healthcare. Kelsey is also engaged in digital and public humanities work. Her co-authored article, a product of her collaborative digital humanities project Remembering the Middle Passage, can be found in archipelagos.
Research and Teaching Interests:
African American Literature
African Diaspora Literature
Black Studies
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Health Humanities Studies
Visual and Media Studies
Digital Humanities
Public Humanities