Dana Murphy (she/her/hers) was born and raised in Pasadena. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and assistant professor who specializes in the study, theorizing, and teaching of Black expressive cultures, literatures, and women's and gender studies. In 2018, she earned her Ph.D. in the English program at the University of California, Irvine, with a focus on Black American literatures, poetics, and theory. Following her doctoral program and prior to her appointment at Caltech, she taught courses that were cross listed in the departments of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS), English Language and Literature, and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as a tenure track LSA Collegiate Fellow and then as an assistant professor. Her ongoing research interests include Black feminist poetics, decolonization in postcolonial literatures, and queer and intergenerational relationships and temporalities in Black diasporic literatures and cultures. She is currently writing a book that is inspired by Phillis Wheatley.