About

Nasrin Olla is a South African scholar specializing in Anglophone and Francophone African diasporic literature, postcolonial theory, and feminist philosophy. Nasrin completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town and her Ph.D. in the Literatures in English Department at Cornell University. From 2019-2021, she was the Inaugural Shauna M. Stark ’76, P’10 Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Brown University’s Pembroke Centre. Currently, Nasrin is an Assistant Professor jointly appointed in English and Africana Studies at the University of Virginia. She is working on her first book project, The Right to Opacity, which engages questions of ethics, alterity, and recognition in feminist and anti-racist traditions. In 2020, Nasrin’s dissertation received 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,and the Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Completion Fellowship. In 2021, Nasrin was named one of the Top 200 Young South Africans by the Mail & Guardian.

Research and Teaching Interests

Anglophone & Francophone African Diasporic Thought

Gender Studies & Queer Theory

Critical Theory & Continental Philosophy