Esther Lezra

Esther Lezra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC San Diego (2005) and was awarded a two-year fellowship from the UC Office of the President under Professors Susan Gillman and George Lipsitz. Her research focuses on the literary and cultural study of the Caribbean, Europe, and North Africa from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on memory, colonial archives, and postcolonial histories.

Her publications include the monograph The Colonial Art of Demonizing Others: A Global Perspective (2014) and articles in Dissidences, Anthurium, and the edited collection African Diasporas. Her current research explores submerged knowledges in transatlantic revolutionary archives and the interplay between memory and forgetting in colonial contexts.

Lezra’s work bridges multiple disciplinary frameworks, integrating comparative literature, cultural anthropology, and postcolonial theory to analyze colonial and postcolonial dynamics across regions. Her scholarship emphasizes multilingual archival work and the decolonization of academic narratives.