Bedour Alagraa

Bedour Alagraa is Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Her scholarship centers on Black radical genealogies, Caribbean political thought, and African anti-colonial frameworks, with foundational contributions to Sylvia Wynter studies and conceptual history of catastrophe.

Her academic journey includes a Ph.D. in Africana Studies from Brown University (2019), where she held an Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Fellowship, a Master's in Race, Ethnicity, and Post-Colonial Studies from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Toronto.

Dr. Alagraa's research interrogates Political Theory through Black Marxism and Caribbean Thought, focusing on epistemic ruptures in plantation modernity. Her forthcoming monograph The Interminable Catastrophe (Duke University Press) reconfigures catastrophe as a political category, while her editorial work on Sylvia Wynter's Black Metamorphosis establishes new paradigms for Black studies. She co-edits the 'Black Critique' book series at Pluto Press and recently completed archiving Wynter's papers.

Analysis of her publications reveals consistent engagement with decolonial philosophy, Caribbean literary aesthetics, and radical political praxis, particularly through Sylvia Wynter's epistemology and Kamau Brathwaite's poetics. Her work bridges political theory, literary criticism, and Caribbean intellectual history.

Scientific recognition includes:

• Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Fellowship

Dr. Alagraa actively shapes scholarly discourse through editorial leadership and co-edits I Am a Revolutionary!: Speeches by Chairman Fred Hampton (Pluto Press, 2024). Her teaching portfolio spans Black Political Thought (AFR 351N), Liberation in the African Diaspora (LAS 310), and Political Autobiographies (AFR 370), emphasizing critical engagement with Black radical traditions across 15+ courses since 2020.

She leads collaborative intellectual projects including the Sylvia Wynter editorial team and international archiving initiatives, positioning UT Austin as a hub for Caribbean thought and Black radical critique.