Postdoctoral Research Associate
2023, PhD English, Indiana University Bloomington
2015, MA English, University of Texas at Arlington
2011, BA English, West Texas A&M University
2009, AA English, Amarillo College
Bio
Sarah Leilani Parijs is a Postdoctoral Research Associate through the Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She holds a Ph.D. in English with a minor in Literature and Science from Indiana University Bloomington, an M.A. in English from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a B.A. in English from West Texas A&M University. She studies and teaches American literature with a specialization in nineteenth-century nature writing and contemporary science fiction. Her research primarily focuses on the histories of ideas and underlying sociocultural influences associated with nature, culture, and science. Her book manuscript, “Allegories of Decay in Gaia: Writing an Interconnected Worlds of Parts in American Nature Writing and Science Fiction” uses an ecocritical postcolonial approach to Gaia theory by demonstrating how allegorical and occult ways of thinking about the planet as alive are imbricated in long colonial histories.
Publications:
- “The Broken Earth: Racialized Geosciences and Un-Person Magics to Darken Gaia.” Science Fiction Studies, 50.2 (2023), 216-232.
Awards
- College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Indiana University Bloomington, 2022-2023.
Courses Taught:
- ENG 146 Science Fiction/Fantasy/Utopia