Academic Bio

[25 words]: SA Smythe is Assistant Professor of Black Studies & the Archive and founding director of the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis at the University of Toronto.

Dr. SA Smythe (they / them) is a critical theorist, artist, and educator committed to blackness and belonging beyond geographies, genders, genre, and other borders. They are Assistant Professor of Black Studies and the Archive at the University of Toronto, where they are founding director of the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis arts and research hub. Smythe is the editor of Troubling the Grounds: Global Configurations of Blackness, Nativism, and Indigeneity special issue for Postmodern Culture and Transnational Black Studies (Liverpool University Press, forthcoming). They are the author of the forthcoming monograph, Where Blackness Meets the Sea: On Crisis, Culture, and the Black Mediterranean and the poetry collection-cum-sound art installation and nine movement performance suite, [proclivity]. Smythe has organised with students and other comrades supporting the Cops Off Campus Coalition and other abolitionist and migrant support collectives across Turtle Island, Europe, and the Mediterranean. Their transmedia artwork has been featured in collaborative and solo exhibitions, installations, and festivals. Winner of the 2022 Rome Prize, Smythe is currently based between Rome, Tkaronto, and occupied Tongva land. They are a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies and serves on the advisory boards of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2), punctum books, Italian Culture, and the book series Imagining Black Europe and MF! Momentary Futures in Black Studies.