Arlene Keizer

Arlene Keizer, Professor and former Chairperson of Humanities and Media Studies, is a scholar in the fields of literary and cultural studies, critical theory, feminist theory–especially Black feminist theory–and psychoanalysis. She is the author of Black Subjects: Identity Formation in the Contemporary Narrative of Slavery (Cornell UP), as well as book chapters and articles in a range of journals including American Literature, PMLA, African American Review, and Radical Teacher. Keizer holds a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley and a master’s degree in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University. In addition to her scholarly work, she has published poetry, film reviews, and experimental criticism. Her first poetry collection, Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black, won the 2022 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in the Wick Poetry Series from The Kent State University Press.

Prior to her arrival at Pratt, Keizer spent 20 years teaching African American, Caribbean, and American literature and culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Brown University, and the University of California, Irvine. Her administrative service, for these universities and the profession at large, has included extensive work reviewing manuscripts and degree programs, serving as an equity advisor, and directing the PhD Program in Culture and Theory at UCI. This East Coast native, born to emigrants from Trinidad, has made Brooklyn her home.

PhD, University of California, Berkeley
MA, Stanford University
BA, Princeton University