Sarah Phillips Casteel

Professor

• B.A. (University of Toronto), M.A., M.Phil. (Columbia University), Ph.D. (Columbia University)
• Email Sarah Phillips Casteel

Research Interests

• Memory and migration
• Postcolonial and diaspora literature, art and theory
• Caribbean and Black Studies
• Holocaust and Jewish Studies

Current Research

My research is situated at the intersection of Black, Jewish, and Holocaust studies. My most recent book, Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art (Columbia UP, 2024), introduces a largely unrecognized corpus of artworks that challenges the erasure of Black wartime history.

Like my previous monograph, Calypso Jews: Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination (Columbia UP, 2016), it probes the boundaries of Holocaust memory and representation by drawing into relation different histories of violence. To further advance conversations between postcolonial and Jewish studies, I co-edited with Heidi Kaufman Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice (U of Virginia P, 2019) and, with Roni Mikel-Arieli, a special issue of the journal Patterns of Prejudice on “Holocaust Refugees in the Colonial World” (2024). I also co-edited with Jennifer Evans Lessons and Legacies XVI: Rethinking Paradigms(2026), the latest volume in the influential Holocaust studies series from Northwestern UP.

My earlier publications contributed to the fields of diaspora studies and hemispheric American studies. They include my monograph Second Arrivals: Landscape and Belonging in Contemporary Writing of the Americas(U of Virginia P, 2007) and my co-edited volume with Winfried Siemerling Canada and its Americas: Transnational Navigations (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2010).

At Carleton, I am a founding member of CTCA: The Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis and MDS: Migration and Diaspora Studies. I am cross-appointed to the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture and the Institute of African Studies. Beyond Carleton, I serve on the Academic Council of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, the advisory board of Bloombury Academic’s Comparative Jewish Literatures series, and the editorial boards of Jewish Historical Studies: A Journal of English-Speaking Jewry and www.AmericanJewishStudies.org.

Selected Professional Honours

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, elected in 2024
• Norman Raab Foundation Fellow, Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 2022
• Marston LaFrance Fellowship, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Carleton University, 2021-22
• Potsdam Postcolonial Chair in Global Modernities, University of Potsdam, Germany, 2021
• Research Achievement Award, Carleton University, 2019-20
• Visiting Fellow, Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, 2019
• Canadian Jewish Literary Award, 2016
• John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature, Government of Ontario, 2007
• Horst Frenz Prize, American Comparative Literature Association, 2004

Research Grants

• SSHRC Insight Grant, 2021-26
• SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2017-19
• SSHRC Standard Research Grant, 2008-12

Books

• Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art. Black Lives in the Diaspora series. Columbia University Press, 2024.
• Calypso Jews: Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination. Literature Now series. Columbia University Press, 2016.
• Second Arrivals: Landscape and Belonging in Contemporary Writing of the Americas. New World Studies series. University of Virginia Press, 2007.

Edited Books

• Lessons and Legacies XVI: Rethinking Paradigms. Essay collection co-edited with Jennifer Evans. Northwestern UP, 2026.
• Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice. Essay collection co-edited with Heidi Kaufman. University of Virginia Press, 2019.
• Canada and Its Americas: Transnational Navigations. Essay collection co-edited with Winfried Siemerling. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010. 

Journal Issues

• “Holocaust Refugees in the Colonial World: Historical and Cultural Approaches.” Special issue of Patterns of Prejudice 57.4 (2023). Co-edited with Roni Mikel-Arieli.
• “Canada and the Americas.” Special issue of Comparative American Studies 3.1 (March 2005). Co-edited with Rachel Adams.

Selected Recent Articles and Book Chapters

• with Rosa de Jong, “’Authentic Masks’: Narrating Jewish Refugee Transit to the Caribbean in Felicia Rosshandler’s Passing Through Havana.” Shofar 43.1 (Spring 2025): 158-77.
• “Blyden and Pissarro on St. Thomas: Pan-Africanism, Zionism, and the Sephardic Caribbean.” Unacknowledged Kinships: Postcolonial Studies and the Historiography of Zionism. Ed. Derek Penslar, Stefan Vogt, and Arieh Saposnik. Brandeis University Press. 2023. 95-118.
• “Outside the Frame: The Josef Nassy Collection and the Boundaries of Holocaust Art.” Jewish Social Studies 27.1 (Winter 2022): 43-82.
• “‘Close Your Eyes and Imagine a German’: The Alps as a Postmemorial Landscape of Black Europe in Maud Sulter’s Photomontages.” Survey Practices and Landscape Photography Across the Globe. Ed. Sophie Junge and Erin Hyde Nolan. Routledge, 2022. 231-250.
• “Telling the Untold Story: Jewish Wartime Refuge in Haiti in Louis-Philippe Dalembert’s Avant que les ombres s’effacent.” American Literary History 33.4 (2021): 756-776.
• “Making History Visible: Dutch Caribbean Artist Josef Nassy’s Visual Diary of Nazi Internment.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 64 (March 2021): 28-46.
• “Jazz Fiction and the Holocaust: Reading History for Clues in the Novels of John A. Williams and Esi Edugyan.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 34.2 (Fall 2020): 206-224.
• “The Caribbean.” Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures. Ed. Stefan Helgesson, Gabriele Rippl, and Birgit Neumann. De Gruyter Press, 2020. 395-414.
• “Teaching Blacks and Jews in Transnational Perspective.” MLA Options for Teaching Jewish American Literature. Ed. Rachel Rubinstein and Roberta Rosenberg. Modern Languages Association, 2020. 90-98.

Selected Keynotes

• “Holocaust Studies From the Outside In: Art and Relational Thinking in Times of Crisis.” Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University Inaugural Emerging Scholars Conference. Clark University. Worcester, Massachussetts, November 7, 2025.
• “The Art of Global Transit: Fugitivity, Wartime Migrations, and the Jewish Caribbean.” Migration, Race and Jewish Art in Latin America and the Caribbean. University of California Irvine. Irvine, California, March 6, 2025.
• “Preserving Shared History: Art in Internment during the Holocaust.” Josef and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture. Jointly organized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Omaha, Nebraska, May 1, 2024.

Selected Public Outreach

• “Black Lives Under Nazism: Literary and Visual Sources.” Holocaust Educational Trust (UK). March 25, 2006. (presentation to British schoolteachers, virtual)
• “Black Lives Under Nazism: Literary and Visual Sources.” Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center Summer Institute. Chicago, Illinois, July 15, 2025. (keynote presentation to American schoolteachers and the public)
• “How Art is Highlighting Black History under Nazism.” Interview with Alan Neal, “All In a Day,” CBC radio, April 11, 2024.
• Interview with Tema Smith about Black Lives Under Nazism. Montreal Holocaust Museum and Jewish Public Library, February 28, 2024. (virtual)
• Consultant and interviewee for Dutch national broadcaster NTR for the television documentary Nieuwe blik terug. Series aired March/April 2023.
• “The Josef Nassy Collection.” Presentation to Holocaust survivors’ group. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. June 10, 2022. (virtual)

Selected Recent Invited Talks

• “Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art.” Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, UCLA. Los Angeles, CA, March 16, 2026.
• “Black and Jewish Lives in a Nazi Internment Camp: The Art of Josef Nassy and Max Brandel.” Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Centre, University College London. London, UK, June 19, 2024.
• “Black Life in a Nazi Internment Camp: The Art of Josef Nassy.” Middlebury College. Middlebury, Vermont, April 17, 2024.
• “Making History Visible: Black Lives Under Nazism in Literature and Art.” Decolonial Dialogues series. University of Amsterdam. Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 26, 2023.
• “Making History Visible: Black Lives Under Nazism in Literature and Art.” Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto. Toronto, February 13, 2023.
• “Creolizing Holocaust Memory: The Jewish Caribbean and Nazi Persecution in Literature and Art.” Parkes Institute and Center for Imperial and Postcolonial Studies, University of Southampton. October 19, 2021. (virtual)
• “Outside the Frame: The Josef Nassy Collection, the Sephardic Caribbean, and the Boundaries of Holocaust Art.” Greenfield/Lynch Lecture, Department of English and Program in Jewish Culture and Society, University of Illinois. April 12, 2021. (virtual)

Selected Recent Conference and Workshop Presentations

• “A novel of many migrations”: The Windrush and the Holocaust in Caryl Phillips’ Another Man in the Street.”Crossing Borders: Jewish Art, Literature and Migration in the Americas, Arizona State University. Tempe, Arizona, March 18, 2026. (invited presentation)
• “The Windrush and the Holocaust in Caryl Phillips’ Another Man in the Street.” Black and Jewish Diasporic Modernity, University of Toronto. Toronto, September 18-19, 2025. (invited presentation)
• “Expanding the Jewish Caribbean Field: Opportunities and Collaborative Pathways.” Latin American Jewish Studies Association. May 21, 2025. (roundtable presentation, virtual)
• “Teaching Aomar Boum and Nadjib Berber’s Graphic Novel Undesirables.” Lessons and Legacies. Claremont and Los Angeles, California, November 14, 2024.
• with Christine Duff, “Architecture as a Connective Figure of Colonial and Wartime Memory in Boum and Berber’s Undesirables.” British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference. Savannah, Georgia, February 12, 2024.
• “Diaspora and Return: Sephardic Caribbean Critical and Artistic Perspectives.” Association for Jewish Studies. San Francisco, CA, December 19, 2023.
• “From Image to Text: Translating the Photographic Archive of Black Experience Under Nazism.” Translation and the Archive, Centre for Translation Studies, University of Dusseldorf. Dusseldorf, Germany, June 2, 2023. (invited presentation)
• “Literary Narratives of Jewish Wartime Refuge in the Caribbean: Felicia Rosshandler’s Passing Through Havana.” Association for Jewish Studies. Boston, December 19, 2022.
• “Entangled Histories: Surinamese Artist Josef Nassy’s Visual Diary of Nazi Internment.” Lessons and Legacies. Ottawa, November 14, 2022.
• “Creolizing Holocaust Art: The Josef Nassy Collection.” Consent not to be a single being: Worlding the Caribbean, Tate Museum, London. Dec. 1-3, 2021. (virtual)

Selected Recent Workshops and Seminars

• Co-organizer (with Tabea Linhard and Natalie Eppelsheimer), “Teaching Holocaust Studies with Refugee Studies: Global Perspectives.” Lessons and Legacies.Claremont and Los Angeles, CA, November 14-17, 2024.
• Co-organizer (with Jacqueline Nassy Brown), “Black Lives under Nazism.” Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, D.C., June 7-16, 2023.
• Co-organizer (with Nicole Waller), “Globalizing Holocaust Studies: Pedagogical Approaches.” University of Potsdam, Germany. July 21, 2021. (virtual)
• Co-organizer (with Sina Rauschenbach), “Jewish Studies and Postcolonial Studies: Do We Need to Talk?” Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg. Berlin, Germany, June 12, 2019.

Completed Doctoral Supervisions

• Sarah Waisvisz (English), “Dissident Diaspora: Genres of Maroon Witness from the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean”
• Gabrielle Etcheverry (Canadian Studies), “Cultures of Coloniality: Latina/o Writing in Canada”
• Aliesha Hosein (English), “From Slaveships to Cruiseships: Ships, Boats and Sailing Vessels in Caribbean Literature”
• Lale Eskicioglu (Cultural Mediations), “Beyond Postcolonialism: The Urban and Social Realist Turn in Indian and Nigerian Literatures”
• Victoria Nolte (Cultural Mediations), “One Place and Another: Worldmaking in Asian Canadian Contemporary Art” (co-supervisor)
• Marie-Catherine Allard (Cultural Mediations), “Reshaping Memory: Counternarratives in Kindertransport Literature”
• Jessica Marino (Cultural Mediations), “Holocaust Memory, Aesthetics and the Dictatorships of the Southern Cone of Latin America: Interconnecting Memories and Traumas”
• Kevin Pat Fong (Cultural Mediations), “Reframing Racial Passing in Asian Diaspora Comics” (co-supervisor)