Sarah Leilani Parijs

Sarah Leilani Parijs is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, supported by the Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity. She holds a PhD in English (with a minor in Literature and Science) from Indiana University Bloomington, an MA in English from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a BA in English from West Texas A&M University.

Her research focuses on American literature, specializing in 19th-century nature writing and contemporary science fiction. She employs ecocritical and postcolonial approaches to examine the intersections of nature, culture, science, and colonial histories. Her book manuscript, *Allegories of Decay in Gaia*, explores how allegorical and occult concepts of planetary life intersect with colonial legacies.

Her publication *The Broken Earth: Racialized Geosciences and Un-Person Magics to Darken Gaia* (2023) exemplifies her engagement with science fiction and environmental critiques. She has received the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2022–2023).

Parijs teaches courses such as ENG 146 (Science Fiction/Fantasy/Utopia), reflecting her expertise in genre theory and speculative literature. Her work bridges literary analysis with interdisciplinary fields like environmental justice and posthumanism.