Camille Rankine

Camille Rankine serves as Assistant Professor of English in the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon University's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her academic work bridges creative practice and critical theory, focusing on the mechanics of language and systemic mechanisms shaping identity.

Her research centers on Black existentialism through Frantz Fanon's concept of the 'zone of non-being,' examining how pseudoscientific frameworks like phrenology and physiognomy constructed racialized identities. She employs literary erasure and revision techniques to critique historical texts on race, migration, and national identity while exploring poetry's capacity to redefine humanity within oppressive systems.

• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• Macdowell Fellowship
• Breadloaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship
• 2010 Discovery Poetry Prize
• Poetry Society of America's 2010 New York Chapbook Fellowship

Rankine's publications demonstrate consistent engagement with Black identity formation and poetic innovation. Her work traces evolving methodologies from early chapbook explorations of identity politics to mature collections dissecting systemic dehumanization through precise linguistic craftsmanship. Current projects include a second poetry collection investigating the origins of marginalized existence and a non-fiction work examining first-generation Black American identity.

As an educator, she focuses on building literary community across disciplines and empowering students to recognize writing's capacity to create bridges between fields, people, and possibilities. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes language as both an 'overused material' and 'essential point of connection,' seeking to make the mundane precious through poetic precision.