Arabella Katz

Combined department: Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 

B. A. Wesleyan University, English, African American Studies, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 

Arabella Katz is a doctoral student in Black Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Drawing on Black feminist and queer theory, affect theory, and archival studies, her research examines Black feminist writing practices and their intimate attachments to their objects of study.

Arabella graduated from Wesleyan University in 2024 where she received The Erness Bright Brody Prize for written expression in African American Studies for her honors thesis, “The Difficult Miracle: Black Feminist Poetics as Praxis,” that explored how Black women’s poetic practices—particularly in the work of Phillis Wheatley-Peters and Zora Neale Hurston—allowed them to operate subversively under the gate-keeping culture of the white literary establishment.

She currently serves as the graduate coordinator of the Endeavors Seminar Series in Yale’s Department of Black Studies and is a graduate fellow with the Black Bibliography Project.