Marissa Kessenich is a doctoral candidate in the English department with interdisciplinary interests in Black feminist theory, cultural studies, and archival politics. Her dissertation centers on historical recovery as an impulse within African American literature, exploring how Black Americans have long sought alternative methods of narrativizing and archiving their history. Her project specifically reads Sally Hemings’s life and legacy as a case study.  

When she isn’t working on her dissertation, Marissa is likely hanging out with friends, blowing off steam at the gym, or seeing a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse.