Britt Rusert received her Ph.D. in English and graduate certificate in Feminist
Studies from Duke University in 2009. Her research and teaching fields include
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century African American literature and culture, American
literature of the long nineteenth century, the history of race and science, science and
technology studies, gender and sexuality studies, and critical theory (especially
genealogies of Marxist and feminist thought). She is also interested in race and genomics
and science fiction. She is currently completing a book manuscript titled Radical
Empiricism: Fugitive Science and the Struggle for Emancipation. The book focuses on a set
of early black writers and performers who were interested in mobilizing a wide range of
popular sciences—including astronomy, phrenology, ethnology, and comparative anatomy—in
the struggle against slavery. She is also beginning a second project, which argues that
recent developments in biotechnology and genomics are poised to radically transform the
study of race and identity within Black Studies. Rusert has been the recipient of
fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Robert H. Smith International
Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, and the John Hope Franklin Humanities
Institute and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Center for the Humanities at
Temple University and the Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy at Duke University.
