Sarah-Gray Lesley

Sarah-Gray Lesley is a Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. Her research explores the intersections of Early Modern British Literature, Critical Race Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the history of reproductive labor.

Her work focuses on the cultural construction of white womanhood in early modern English literature, linking texts like Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko to histories of colonialism, global capitalism, and the transatlantic slave trade. She examines how socio-economic shifts shaped racialized gender norms through literary tropes tied to reproduction and consumption.

• “‘The Mother’s Mouth’: Markets, Birthing Rooms, and White Women in Thomas Middleton’s London, 1613” (2024, forthcoming)
• Contributions to Seeing Race Before Race: Visual Culture and the Racial Matrix (2023)
• “The Epicure in Surinam: Lucretian Reception and Skepticism in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko” (2020)

Scientific Awards:

• Dean’s Award for Graduate Student Teaching Excellence (2022)

Lesley is also involved in the digital humanities project Beshrew Me!, which reimagines Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew as a digital variorum, and has coordinated the University of Chicago’s London study abroad program.