Sarah Phillips Casteel

Sarah Phillips Casteel is a Professor of English at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She is cross-appointed to the Institute of African Studies and the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture. Casteel is a founding member of the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis and MDS: Migration and Diaspora Studies at Carleton University. Beyond Carleton, she serves on the Academic Council of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, the advisory board of Bloombury Academic's Comparative Jewish Literatures series, and the editorial boards of Jewish Historical Studies: A Journal of English-Speaking Jewry and www.AmericanJewishStudies.org.

Her educational background includes a B.A. from the University of Toronto and M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, reflecting her strong foundation in literary and cultural studies.

Casteel's research is situated at the intersection of Black studies and Jewish studies, with particular focus on Black and Jewish diaspora literature and culture, global Holocaust studies, memory studies, and Caribbean and hemispheric American studies. Her groundbreaking work challenges conventional narratives of Holocaust history by centering Black wartime experiences, particularly through her research on the Josef Nassy Collection. She has significantly expanded the discussion of Black-Jewish literary and aesthetic relations beyond the U.S. national frame, demonstrating how Caribbean literary traditions have shaped Jewish identity and vice versa. Her scholarship reveals how marginalized histories intersect and how literature and art serve as crucial sites for documenting and resisting historical erasure.

• Norman Raab Foundation Fellow, Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 2022
• Marston LaFrance Fellowship, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Carleton University, 2021-22
• Potsdam Postcolonial Chair in Global Modernities, University of Potsdam, Germany, 2021
• Research Achievement Award, Carleton University, 2019-20
• Visiting Fellow, Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, 2019
• Canadian Jewish Literary Award, 2016
• John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature, Government of Ontario, 2007
• Horst Frenz Prize, American Comparative Literature Association, 2004

Professor Casteel has supervised numerous doctoral students across English, Canadian Studies, and Cultural Mediations, with dissertations focusing on Caribbean literature, diaspora studies, Holocaust memory, and visual culture. Her supervisory work demonstrates her commitment to fostering interdisciplinary scholarship that bridges literary studies with historical and cultural analysis. She has secured substantial research funding through multiple SSHRC grants, including an SSHRC Insight Grant (2021-26), an SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2017-19), and an SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2008-12), supporting her groundbreaking research on Black experiences during the Holocaust and Caribbean-Jewish literary relations.

Casteel actively participates in international academic communities, co-organizing significant workshops and conferences that bridge Holocaust studies with postcolonial studies, such as 'Black Lives under Nazism' at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and 'Globalizing Holocaust Studies: Pedagogical Approaches' at the University of Potsdam. Her work connects scholars across disciplines and national boundaries, fostering dialogue between Black studies, Jewish studies, and Holocaust studies, while challenging the Eurocentric frameworks that have traditionally dominated Holocaust scholarship.