Scholarship and Biography

Faith Smith is an Associate Professor in the departments of African and African American Studies, and English and American Literature, and the Latin American and Latino Studies, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and CAST Programs. Her research interests are in the intellectual and cultural histories of the Caribbean and the African Diaspora, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Her essays on intellectual life, gender, sexuality and sovereignty include recent articles such as "Fabricating Intimacies: Artificial Silk and Cloth Wives in the Interwar Moment" (Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 12: 2018) and "Good Enough for Booker T to Kiss: Hampton, Tuskegee, and Caribbean Self-Fashioning" (Journal of Transnational American Studies 5, 1: 2013); the edited collection Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean (2011); and a forthcoming book entitled "Strolling Through the Ruins: The Caribbean's Non-Sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century."

Honors

Fellowship
Harvard University (United States, Cambridge)
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (United States, New Brunswick) - RU, 1997-1998
Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellow
Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens (United States, San Marino), 1998
Fellowship
National Humanities Center (United States, Durham) - NHC, 2002-2003
Dean's Office grant for developing AAAS interdisciplinary course
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2004
Fellowship
National Endowment for the Humanities (United States, Washington D.C.) - NEH, 2005, Summer
Norman Award
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2013
Senior Faculty Research Leave
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2013-2014
Mandel Humanities Center Faculty Grant in the Humanities for “Silk Roads and Highways: Imagining ‘China’ in the Caribbean Today”
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2019
Norman Award for Spanish tuition at the Instituto Cultural Oaxaca
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2019
Theodore and Jane Norman Fund for Faculty Scholarship
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 2021

Organizational Affiliations

Chair, Department of African and African American Studies, Brandeis University

Marta F. Kauffman Chair in African and African American Studies and Professor of English, Department of African and African American Studies, Brandeis University

Marta F. Kauffman Chair in African and African American Studies and Professor of English, Department of English, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Interdepartmental Program in Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University

Education

Duke University
Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A.
University of the West Indies
B.A.