Dagmawi Woubshet

Dagmawi Woubshet is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Associate Professor of English. He is a scholar, writer, and translator working at the intersection of African American, LGBTQIA+, and African studies. He wrote the book, The Calendar of Loss: Race, Sexuality, and Mourning in the Early Era of AIDS, and co-edited “Ethiopia: Literature, Art, and Culture,” a special issue of Callaloo, a journal focused on the African Diaspora. He has three additional book projects underway: James Baldwin and the Art of Late-Style; the first English translation of Sebhat Gebre Egziabher’s 1966 Amharic novel The Seventh Angel; and a collection of lyric essays.

Woubshet has served as an associate editor of Callaloo and currently is on the editorial board of Transition, a magazine of Africa and the Diaspora. He’s held fellowships at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University; the Modern Art Museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he curated “Julie Mehretu: The Addis Show” (2016); Africa Institute in Sharjah, UAE (2020-21); and Civitella Ranieri, Italy (2022). Before joining the University of Pennsylvania, Woubshet taught at Cornell University.