Degrees:
Ph.D., Univ. of Texas at Austin
M.A., Univ. of Texas at Austin
B.A., Minnesota State Univ.
Natassja B. Gunasena holds a Ph.D in African and African Diaspora Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research explores Black and Asian women's lived experiences of race, gender, and sexuality through an interdisciplinary, transnational lens. At Trinity, she teaches courses on gender and militarism, Black Atlantic gender and sexuality, and diasporic, global south lives. Her pedagogy highlights discussion-based learning, interdisciplinarity, and uses art, film, and narrative to interrogate the boundaries of traditional epistemological frames. She is Trinity's inaugural Eric Estes '91 Research Fellow and is currently at work on her manuscript, Cobra Women: Reworking South Asian Femininity in the African Diaspora
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Gender and Nationalism
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Coloniality and Anti-Blackness
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Black and Third World Feminisms
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Autoethnography as Critical Praxis
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FYSM-164
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Creativity, Invention, Innovation
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INTS-207
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Global South
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INTS-209
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War and the Asian Diaspora
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INTS-268
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Gender and Sexuality in the African Diaspora
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INTS-351
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Black Islam: Race, Religion, and Revolution in Africa and the Americas
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INTS-401
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Senior Seminar in International Studies
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Blackness and Racialization
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Visuality and Racial Science
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Afro/Asian Diasporic Formations
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Queer Diasporas
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South Asian Nationalisms
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Publications:
- Gunasena, Natassja B. "The Specter of Blackness: Queering Sudanese Masculinities in the Black Atlantic." Callaloo 43.2 (2025): 89-104.
- Gunasena, Natassja B. “‘Something Like Kali and Durga Must've Rocked’: Sri Lankan Femininity and the Poetics of Diaspora.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 47.1 (2019): 48-64.
Recent Papers and Talks:
- “Jolene, Jolene”: Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland, and the (Un)Sung Lesbianism of Black Feminism. Lesbian Lives Conference, 2025
- “We Everywhere, We Missing All the Time: Teaching Queer and Gendered Experiences of War Across South/East Asian Diasporas.” National Women’s Studies Association Conference, 2025
- “Work Work Work Work Work:” Rihanna, Du Bois, and the Fem-Work of Imagining Afro Asian Solidarity. The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, 2024
- “Burning Love, Burning Language,” Ghostly Commemoration and Provisional Solidarities: The Conditions of Asian Americanist Love” American Studies Association Conference, 2023
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- Eric Estes '91 Research Fellowship, 2026
- Travel and Research Grant, The Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2020
- Travel and Speaking Grant, Asian American/Asian Research Institute, City University of New York, 2019
- Dissertation Fellowship, The University of Texas at Austin, 2019
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