Arselyne Chery is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English, and a Pre Doctoral Woodson Fellow, at the University of Virginia. She is also an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellow in Caribbean Studies. Her doctoral research and teaching have largely focused on twentieth century /contemporary Anglophone Caribbean and African American literature, Black feminisms, and postcolonial studies. Over the course of her graduate study, Arselyne’s work has also been supported by the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Summer (AHSS) Research Fellowship; the Americas Center / Centro de las Américas Research Grant; the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship; and the Praxis (Digital Humanities) Fellowship at the UVA Scholars’ Lab.  

Arselyne is a first-generation college and graduate student. She holds a (en-route) M.A. in English from the University of Virginia (2023) and a B.A. in American Studies with a concentration/minor in Africana Studies from Williams College (2021). In the Department of English at UVA, Arselyne has had the privilege of serving as: co-organizer of UVA English’s 2024 Interdisciplinary Graduate Symposium (under the theme, “Intimacies”); Vice President of the Graduate English Student Association (2022-23); Graduate Student Representative of the Writing and Rhetoric Curriculum committee (2023-24); and Graduate Organizer of the Black Feminist Theory in the 21st Century Reading Group (2024-25).