Asya Taylor

Asya Taylor is a PhD student in English and African American Studies at Yale University, where she is a Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) Graduate Fellow and a Dean’s Emerging Scholar at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Asya’s research focuses on the possibility of Black liberation within African American literature. Her honors thesis, “Echoes of Humanity: Black Aesthetics in Opportunity’s 1925 Literary Contest,” analyzes conceptions of authenticity in Black storytelling during the New Negro Movement and its entrenchment in institutional desires, gendered expectations, and urban-rural conflicts.

At Yale, Asya aims to continue her work in early 20th-century African American print studies, expanding and refining her approach to archival work. By engaging with both theoretical and material aspects of African American literature, she hopes to produce work that speaks to the multi-faceted nature of Black life.

I have a B.A. in English with minors in Creative Writing and Communications from Wake Forest University.

My keywords on what I plan to focus on in my time at Yale are: 

20th Century African American Literature

New Negro Movement

African American Print Culture

Black Feminism

Thank you,

Asya.