Margo Natalie Crawford

Margo Natalie Crawford serves as Professor of English and holds the prestigious Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professorship for Faculty Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts & Sciences. Formerly the Director of the Center for Africana Studies (appointed 2019), she maintains an active teaching schedule through spring 2025 with courses including New Directions in Twenty-First Century Black Studies and Twenty-First Century African American Literature.

Her research traverses 20th and 21st-century American literary landscapes with deep engagement in Global Black Studies, Radical Feminism, and Queer Theory. Crawford's scholarship uniquely bridges literature, visual art, and cultural movements to explore black radical imaginations across historical periods. Her methodological innovation lies in analyzing affective dimensions of African American literature through concepts like 'moodscape' and 'black collective nervous system'.

Her publications reveal evolving scholarly trajectories from early psychoanalytic examinations of black masculinity to contemporary explorations of 21st-century black aesthetics. The 2024 Boundary 2 article demonstrates her current focus on Black Feminist Thought through Spillers and Morrison, while her 2021 monograph redefines the entire field of African American literary studies through affect theory.

• Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence (2019-present)

Crawford has chaired six doctoral dissertations since 2020 examining topics including AfroAsian connections, black experimental writing, black girl vulnerability, and black urban revolution. Her editorial work includes serving on the boards of Society for Textual Scholarship, James Baldwin Review, and Wiley Blackwell Anthology of African American Literature. She actively participates in major academic conferences including the Postcolonial Dreams Conference and Legacy of 1619 events.