Makeba Lavan

Makeba Lavan serves as an Assistant Professor of English at Grinnell College, specializing in African American cultural production and speculative narratives. Her research interrogates how Black writers and artists deploy Afrofuturism to envision liberated futures for diasporic communities.

Dr. Lavan's scholarship centers on the intersection of Popular Culture and Black resistance epistemologies, with particular focus on Toni Cade Bambara's pedagogical legacy. She co-edited "Realizing the Dream of A Black University," & Other Writings through CUNY's Poetics Document Initiative, recovering Bambara's teaching materials from CUNY and Spelman College. Her current project analyzes speculative fiction as a methodology for Black world-building.

Her intellectual contributions have appeared in Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies and Modern Language Studies. Dr. Lavan actively participates in scholarly discourse through events like The School of Toni Cade Bambara (2020) and Lost & Found Series VII Launch (2018), engaging with Black feminist frameworks and diasporic cultural production.