Kirin Wachter-Grene

Kirin Wachter-Grene (she/her) is assistant professor and coordinator of the First Year Seminar Program in the Department of Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington with a focus on 19th–21st century African American literature and gender and sexuality studies. She joined SAIC in 2018, having taught previously at New York University, Bard College, and the University of Washington. Her primary research and teaching interests include Black feminist thought; Black sexuality studies; Black queer studies; African American literature and paraliterature; BIPOC speculative fiction; queer studies and history; BDSM and kink; transgression, censorship, and spectatorship; and Samuel R. Delany.

Dr. Wachter-Grene was the 2017–18 Visiting Scholar at the Leather Archives and Museum (LA&M). While at the LA&M she conducted research into Black women’s historical, manifold involvement with leather, kink, and fetish communities. Her LA&M research informed At the Limits of Desire: Black Radical Pleasure, a special issue of The Black Scholar she guest-edited in honor of the journal’s 50th Anniversary (50.2, 2020) and the special followup, double-issue titled Edgeplay: Black Radical Pleasure II (53.3/4, 2023). Dr. Wachter-Grene currently sits on the Active Editorial Board of The Black Scholar. She has published peer-reviewed articles and reviews in scholarly journals including Social Text, Palimpsest, African American Review, The Black Scholar, Callaloo, Women's Studies Quarterly, Post45, Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, and Feminist Formations. Her first book manuscript, titled Black Kenosis: The Erotic Undoing of African American Literature, is forthcoming from Fordham University Press.

Wachter-Grene and Biswas, "Rituals of Survival," 2024, print; Wachter-Grene and Chude-Sokei, "Black Radical Pleasure II" Intro, 2023, print; Wachter-Grene and Chude-Sokei, "Black Radical Pleasure" Intro, 2020, print; Wachter-Grene, "Caretaking in So Many Ways: A Conversation with Mistress Velvet", 2020, print; Wachter-Grene, "Teaching Three Copies of 'Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe,'" 2020, print; Wachter-Grene, "Iola Leroy's 'Long, Long Ago Song,'" 2020, print.