Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair in Black Feminist Technologies and Artistic Praxis
Biography
Kristin Moriah is an Associate Professor of African American Literary Studies at 鶹's University in Kingston, Ontario. She earned her Ph.D. in English Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center where she was the recipient of the Melvin Dixon Prize for the best dissertation in African American Studies. In Spring 2025 she was elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society. She was the 2024 recipient of the . Dr. Moriah was the 2022 recipient of the American Studies Association’s . She was a 2022 Visiting Fellow . From 2021-2023 she was the co-director of the , a joint initiative between 鶹 and the University of Toronto which sought to advance Black Studies in Canada at the graduate level. She is the editor of published on trailblazing nineteenth-century Black feminist, activist, journal, and educator, Mary Ann Shadd Cary.
The volume focuses particularly on three main topics: Shadd Cary’s relationship to immigration, nation, and colonization; the Black creative and nation-building work that Shadd Cary has inspired; and contemporary research methodologies like digital humanities as they can be used to better understand Shadd Cary’s moment, impacts, and life. Through a multi- and interdisciplinary lens, the collection celebrates Shadd Cary’s cultural significance and intellectual contributions, as well as their reverberations in her time and in ours.
Selected Publications
BOOKS
Insensible of Boundaries: Studies in Mary Ann Shadd Cary. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025.
The first collection of essays published on trailblazing nineteenth-century Black feminist, activist, journal, and educator, Mary Ann Shadd Cary.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823–1893) was a trailblazing Black feminist, activist, journalist, and educator whose achievements can be traced across Canada and the United States. Born in a border state in the antebellum era, Shadd Cary taught in schools in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania before becoming a strong advocate for immigration to Canada in her early adulthood. Once she moved to Ontario in the mid-1850s, she dove headfirst into early Black Canadian debates. She fought to integrate schools in the States and Canada and became, as the editor of the Provincial Freeman, the first Black woman to edit a newspaper in North America.
Despite her achievements and impact on Black life in North America, Shadd Cary is a relatively little-known figure outside of the continent. Insensible of Boundaries is the first collection of essays published on this thinker. With this volume, editor Kristin Moriah brings together eleven essays from a broad range of perspectives, including historical, literary, gender, ecological, bibliographical, visual, sound, and performance studies, on nineteenth-century Black feminist inquiry in North America.
SPECIAL ISSUES AND FORUMS OF ACADEMIC JOURNALS
Black Bibliography, Book History, and Print Culture in Canada forum, Canadian Literature
264 (Spring 2026).
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper special issue. Co-ed Rafael Walker. J19: The Journal of Nineteenth Century Americanists, 13. 2 (March 2026).
RECENT PEER-REVIEWED BOOK CHAPTERS
“‘Who Am I Now?’: Towards a Mary Ann Shadd Cary Renaissance.” Insensible of Boundaries: Studies in Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Ed. Kristin Moriah. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025.
“Another Link to Life”: Black Feminist Geography and the Digital Humanities in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Teaching Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Ed. Lynn Domina. Modern Language Association, 2024.
“From Ballad Opera to Minstrelsy and Back: Social Class, Race, and Gender on the North American Musical Stage.” The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre. Edited by Laura MacDonald and Ryan Donovan, Routledge, 2023.
“Sounding: Black Print Culture at the Edges of the Black Atlantic” in New Directions in Print Culture Studies: Archives, Materiality, and Modern American Culture. Ed. Jesse W. Schwartz and Daniel Worden. Bloomsbury, 2022.
RECENT PEER-REVIEWED CONTRIBUTIONS TO ACADEMIC JOURNALS
“In Defence of Black Bibliography: A Conversation with George Elliott Clarke,” Forum on Black
Bibliography, Book History, and Print Culture in Canada, Canadian Literature 264 (Spring 2026): 154-175.
“On the Record: Sissieretta Jones and Black Feminist Recording Praxes.” Sound Acts special issue
of Performance Matters 6.2. February 2021.
RECENT ESSAYS IN ACADEMIC JOURNALS
“‘Material Acts in a Material World’: Black Bibliography, Book History, and Print Culture in
䲹Բ岹.” Canadian Literature 264, (Spring 2026): 116–18.
Moriah, Kristin and Rafael Walker. “‘A Pleasant Gathering of Friends’: Celebrating Frances E.W.
Harper at Last.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth Century Americanists 13. 2 (March 2026): pp.
199–205.&Բ;
Moriah, Kristin, and Katherine McKittrick. “Strategies for Liberation: A Conversation with
Katherine McKittrick.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 52. 3/4 (October 2024): pp. 193–201.
“We Need to Speak about Home: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Domestic Concerns.” Legacy
41.2, (January 2024): pp. 214–20.
“That Men Might Listen Earnestly to It: Hearing Blackness,” English Studies in Canada/ESC
46.2–3. (June/September 2023): 33–37.
“Practice as Ritual/Ritual as Practice.” C-Magazine 154, (April 24, 2023): 82-83.
“What Will We Do with All That Data?” American Periodicals 32. 2, (December 2022): 133–36.
Additional Information
SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS & GRANTS
FELLOWSHIPS
- 2024
- 2022 Just Transformations Fellowship. The Center for Black Digital Research, Pennsylvania State University.
- 2022 Visiting Scholar in Residence. Pennsylvania State University Humanities Institute
GRANTS
2024 SSHRC Insight Development Grant, “Breaking Loose: Black Self-Publishing in Canada”
2021 SSHRC Insight Development Grant, “Papers Worthy of Patronage: Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s Life in Letters”
2021 SSHRC Connection Grant [Co-Applicant], Black Studies Summer Seminar
AWARDS & PRIZES
- 2023 Black Scholars Excellence in Mentoring Award, 鶹
- 2022 Yasuo Sakakibara Prize, American Studies Association
- 2022 Mayor’s Arts Awards: Arts Champion Award (Skeleton Park Arts Festival), City of Kingston
