Nasrin Olla is a South African scholar who specializes in African diasporic literature, postcolonial literature, and continental philosophy. Nasrin completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town and her PhD in English literature and languages at Cornell University. Nasrin is currently a Visiting Scholar at Brown University. At Brown, she is working on her first book project, Reaching for Opacity, which engages anew with the theme of alterity across a range of contemporary African diasporic and postcolonial literature. In 2020, Reaching for Opacity was awarded Cornell University’s Guilford Prize for the best dissertation of the year. Nasrin’s research has been supported by the Mellon Mays Fellowship, the A.W. Mellon Fellowship at the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, and the Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Completion Fellowship.
Research and Teaching Interests
African Diasporic & African Literature
Ethics/Critical Theory/Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Gender Studies/Queer Theory
