Rosie Poku - The Performance of Translation

Experience the culmination of years of research with Rosie Poku's new talk "The Performance of Translation: Journeys in Afro-Diasporic Women's Modernisms". Join Rosie as she explores the writings of women across the African diaspora and brings them into a contemporary understaning.

Rose (Rosie) Poku (she/her) is a joint PhD candidate in Africana Studies and Comparative Literature & Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. She is pursuing two certificates in GSWS (Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies) and CETLI (Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Innovation) as well. Rosie earned her Bachelors of Arts from Smith College in 2022, where she graduated summa cum laude as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Her research interests broadly lie in Black women's diasporic and transnational feminist writings and performances of the early twentieth century. Rosie engages with Afro-diasporic texts written in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese. Her work has been generously supported by organizations such as the Fontaine Fellowship, the Social Science Research Council, the Haskins Grant, and Penn's Global Dissertation Grant. Rosie has a passion for teaching and pedagogy, and she is a recipient of the 2025 Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students.