CHELSEA MIKAEL FRAZIER, PhD is a Black feminist ecocritic—writing, researching, and teaching at the intersection of Black feminist theory and environmental thought.  Across a diverse array of platforms, all of Dr. Frazier’s work is geared toward creating paths toward harmonial Worlds that no longer rely on the harm of Black people, the destruction of our environment, or the exploitation of femininity to keep spinning.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ 

In 2019, she founded Ask An Amazon, an educational hub where she designs educational tools, curates community gatherings, gives lectures, and provides consulting services meant to help students, professionals, and organizations with their intellectual and creative development. She also sits on the Cornell University Department of Literatures in English faculty where she teaches students and trains emergent scholars in the fields of African American Literature and Culture, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Environmental Humanities. 

Dr. Frazier is currently at work on her first book manuscript which is a culmination of a years-long ecocritical investigation of contemporary Black women artists, writers, and activists. In her analyses, she illuminates the cultural histories and creative contributions of Black women who’ve carved-out a rich and transformative practice of ecological ethics alternative to the “environmentalisms” that are readily legible in Western society. 

Dr. Frazier earned her Ph.D in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University. Additionally, she earned her Master of Arts from the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern, her Master of Arts from the American Studies program at Purdue University, and her Bachelor of Arts from the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College.   

As an award-winning interdisciplinary researcher, Dr. Frazier's scholarship spans the fields of Black feminist literature and theory, visual culture, ecocriticism and the broader environmental humanities, political theory, science and technology studies, and Afrofuturism. Her work has been generously supported by the Northwestern University Presidential Society of Fellows, the Science in Human Culture program at Northwestern University, the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, the Social Science Research Council, the Alumni Association of Barnard College, the Purdue University Lynn Fellowship, and the Mellon Mays Fellowship program. 

About the program:

This year-round calendar of art lectures provides students with intellectual access to a diverse group of acclaimed artists, art historians, art educators, curators, and scholars. Our guests conduct on-campus talks about their art, research, and careers, adding to the pedagogical discourse of contemporary art in the classroom. Visiting speakers are proposed and voted on by a committee of faculty and graduate students across disciplines. All VAS events are free and open to the public, an important educational program for the regional art scene.