Diana R. Paulin is the Charles A. Dana Research Associate Professor of American Studies and English and affiliate faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Trinity College. She is also the coordinator of Trinity’s African American Studies minor, and co-director of its Global Health Humanities Gateway program. She is the author of Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction, published by University of Minnesota and winner of American Society for Theater Research’s Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship in African American Theatre Studies. Paulin has published, taught, and lectured extensively on Black autism. She is co-editor of the forthcoming MLA collection Neurofutures, which includes her chapter “Autistic Blackness: An Interrogative Essay.” Paulin’s relational approach to research, teaching, creative production, and activism is informed by both her lived experiences and her intersectional identity. Her work as a parent-advocate for the inclusion and acceptance of Black neurodivergence, neuroatypicality, and neurodiversity can be found in Paulin's current projects— her monograph, Black Autism/Autistic Blackness, and a collaborative interactive digital archive Locating Black Autism.

• Invited speaker. “‘Too Thick’: blackness, motherlove, and autistic identity.” Neurodiversity/Neurodivergence Symposium. Brown University, Providence, R.I., May 2019.
• Invited panelist. “How  The Scottsboro Boys  Can Help Us Talk About Racism.” Connecticut Historical Society: Library and Museum, Hartford, CT, July 2019.
• Talkback facilitator,  The Scottsboro Boys, the Playhouse of Park Theatre, West Hartford, CT, July 2019.
• Invited speaker. “Conversations With . . .” (aesthetics and autism). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 17, 2019.
• Respondent. “The Child: What Kind of Human.” MLA annual meeting, New York, NY, January 2018.
• Chair. “What a Little Moonlight Can Do: Race, Poverty, and Sexuality in the Age of Dissent.” ASA annual meeting, Chicago, IL, November 2017.
• Chair/Respondent. “ A Staged Reading of Lisa B. Thompson’s Underground: Trauma, History and the Limits of Black Power.” ASA annual meeting, Toronto, Canada, October 8-11, 2015.
• Panelist. “The color(s) of autism: reframing unmarked whiteness in autism narratives.” Society for Disability Studies (SDS) annual meeting, Minneapolis, MN, June 2014.
• Panelist, “Madness and Mental Illness,” TIIS sponsored panel, Trinity College Common Hour, November 14, 2013.
• Panelist. Convener, Chair, “Autism and Debt,” ASA annual meeting, Washington, DC, November 2013.
• Panelist. “Policing and Pathologizing Race, Gender and Sexuality: The (re)Production of Disability Discourse” for “Citizenship and Belonging: Disability, Race, and Sexuality in America” panel. ASA annual meeting, San Juan, PR, November 15-18, 2012.
• Panelist, “Policing and Pathologizing Race, Gender, and Sexuality: The (re)Production of Disability Discourse” for “Citizenship and Belonging: Disability, Race and Sexuality in America” panel. ASA annual meeting, San Juan, PR, November 2012.
• Speaker. “Performances of Black Cultural Trauma and Memory,” Roundtable. MLA annual meeting, Los Angeles, CA, January, 2011.
• Panelist. “From Personal to Pedagogical: Autism Everyday” for “Disability in Context: Personalizing the Profession” panel. MLA annual conference, San Francisco, CA, December 2008.

• Charles A. Dana Research Associate Professor, Trinity College, 2023-25.
• Thomas Church Brownell Prize for Teaching Excellence, 2018
• 2013 ASTR (American Society for Theatre Research) Eroll Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship in African-American Theatre Studies for Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation U.S. Drama and Fiction (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)
• A. Whitney Griswold Research Grant.,Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, 2008
• Morse Fellowship, Yale University, 2002-2003
• Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 1998-1999