Kennedy Marie Crowder

Biography

Background

Kennedy Marie Crowder is a second-year PhD student at The University of Edinburgh. Her ongoing doctoral thesis, funded through the Edinburgh Doctoral College Scholarship, examines African American literature of the 20th and 21st century through the lens of Weird Fiction and Theory. 

She studied English Literature, American Sign Language, and Japanese as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving the Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English and the English Department Community Award. Her MA in Black Humanities from University of Bristol and MRes in English Literature from University of York were funded through the Marshall Scholarship, in which she drew on theories from physics of Blackness scholarship to interpret nonlinear and unstable spacetimes in Black diasporic literatures.

Having served as Managing and Associate Editor for "The Penn Review" during undergrad, Kennedy continues to nurture a love of creative writing and editorial work through her role as Co-Editor of the Back of the Envelope department at "The Offing" and peer reviewing and editing for "FORUM."

Qualifications

University of York - Masters by Research in English Literature

University of Bristol - Taught Masters in Black Humanities (distinction)

University of Pennsylvania - BA in English Literature (summa cum laude); certificate in American Sign Language/Deaf Culture; minor in Japanese - East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Responsibilities & affiliations

British Association of Modernist Studies (BAMS)

Postgraduate Research School Representative - Literatures, Languages and Cultures (2025-2026)

College Postgraduate Research Committee, student member (2025-2026)

FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & Arts, peer reviewer and editor (2025-2026)

The Back of the Envelope department at The Offing literary magazine, co-editor (2023-ongoing)

James Tait Black Prize in Fiction reader (2026)

Scottish BPOC Writers Network

Phi Beta Kappa

Research summary

Kennedy's research interests include:

  • African American literature
  • Weird fiction and theory  
  • The impact and influence of race on perceptions of space/time
  • Physics of Blackness 
  • Archive writing

Papers delivered

"Weird Automata: A Necropolitic." Aliens, Automata, and Amphibia Seminar at the Modernist Studies Association/British Association for Modernist Studies 2026 Joint Annual Conference, 1-4 July 2026.

"'A little more than life was taken from them': The Figure of the Lynched Zombie in Percival Everett’s The Trees (2021)." Monster Media Conference, 17-19 June 2026.

"'A mirror of the present': Black Women’s* Contemporary Writing as Archival Call-andResponse." Countervoices - Centre for Modern Studies Postgraduate Forum 'Poetics of Witness' Research Seminar, 16 May 2024.

“Fabulation, Physics, and Racial Horror.” New Directions in Black Humanities Conference, 18 April 2023.

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