Kalena Holeman

Focus(es) of Study: 20th/21st century African American and African Diaspora literatures, Black feminist theory, Black classicism and classical reception studies, critical theory, intellectual history, archive studies

Degrees: M.Phil., Classics, University of Cambridge; B.A., English Literature, University of Houston

Bio: Kalena Holeman is a PhD student in the Departments of English and Black Studies at Yale University, as well as a Graduate Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) and a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Dean’s Emerging Scholar Fellow. Previously, she completed an M.Phil. in Classics at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and a B.A. in English Literature at the University of Houston. Her research sits at the intersection of Black feminist theory and classical reception to better understand antiquity’s influence on modern conceptions of race, literature, and culture. Her work explores Black women’s negotiations of voice and movement in relation to and against the Western literary canon. At Cambridge, her master’s dissertation opened a dialogue between M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! and Homer’s Odyssey and read articulations of voice and the self through the medium of water. While at Yale, she hopes to deepen her knowledge of Black women’s counter-canonical remappings, drawing on both classical reception and other critical theoretical methods.

Combined Department: English Language and Literature