Olivia Polk

Olivia R. Polk (she/they) is a Black dyke living on territories of the Haliwa-Saponi, Sappony and Occaneechi Band of Saponi (Durham, NC). She is a PhD candidate in American Studies, African American Studies, and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Their dissertation, “‘We Can Dream the Dark’: Black Lesbianism and the Ethic of Black Queerness” foregrounds Black lesbianism as a social ethic articulated through literary and visual experimentalism, and political organizing modeled by Black lesbians in the late 20th century and adopted by other Black queer subjects throughout the same period. In addition to their research and teaching she is a member of the What Would an HIV Doula Do? collective (WWHIVDD), and serves as Student Councilor for the American Studies Association (2022-2025). Starting in Fall 2023 she will join the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia as a Predoctoral fellow.

Olivia’s work in teaching and research has received support from the Center for the Study Race Indigeneity and Transnational Migration, and Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale, in addition to the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Visuals AIDS, and the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and the Visual AIDS blog.