Hazel V. Carby

Hazel Vivian Carby (born 15 January 1948 in Okehampton, Devon) is Professor Emerita of African American Studies and of American Studies. She served as Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University.

Early life and education Hazel Carby was born to Jamaican and Welsh parents in Okehampton, Devon, UK, on 15 January 1948. She earned a BA degree in English and history from Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1970, then a PGCE in 1972, at the Institute of Education, London University. She taught high school from 1972 to 1979, then went back to university, at Birmingham University Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, where she gained a M.A (1979) and a Ph.D. (1984).

Career In 1981, Carby was appointed as a lecturer in the English Department at Yale University (1981–82), after which she taught English at Wesleyan University (1982–89), and rejoined Yale University in 1989. She is now Yale's Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies. Her teaching focuses on race, gender and sexuality in Caribbean and diasporic culture and literature; in transnational and postcolonial literature and theory; in representations of the black female body; and in genres of science fiction.

Awards and Honors 2016: Jay B. Hubbell Medal for lifetime achievement in American Literature - Modern Language Association. 2019: honorary Doctor of Letters, Wesleyan University 2019: Stuart Hall Outstanding Mentor Award, Caribbean Philosophical Association 2020: Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding for Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands (Verso).

Personal life Carby married fellow Yale professor Michael Denning on 29 May 1982.